her consciousness once more.

"I thought you tried to avoid that last stroke. If you flinch from
punishment it is not submission, but rebellion."

Magda gripped her hands together and pressed her knees into the hard
stone floor, her muscles taut with anticipation as she heard the soft
whistle of the thongs cleaving the air.

This time she bore the pang of anguish motionless, but the vision of
Michael went out suddenly in a throbbing darkness of swift agony. Her
shoulders felt red-hot. The pain shot up into her brain like fingers
of flame. It clasped her whole body in a torment, and the ecstasy of
self-surrender was lost in a sick groping after sheer endurance.

The next stroke, crushing across that fever of intolerable suffering,
wrung a hoarse moan from her dry lips. Her hands locked together till
she felt as though their bones must crack with the strain as she waited
for the next inexorable stroke.

One moment! . . . Two! An eternity of waiting!

"Go on!" she breathed. "Oh! . . . Be quick . . ." Her voice panted.

No movement answered her. Unable to endure the suspense, she
straightened her bowed shoulders and turned in convulsive appeal to
where she had glimpsed the flail-like rise and fall of Sister Agnetia's
serge-clad arm.

There was no one there! The bare, cell-like chamber was empty, save
for herself. Sister Agnetia had stolen away, completing the penance of
physical pain by the refinement of anguish embodied in those hideous
moments of mental dread.

Magda almost fancied she could hear an oily chuckle outside the door.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THOSE THAT WERE LEFT BEHIND

For the first month or two after Magda's departure Gillian found that
she had her hands full in settling up various business and personal
matters which had been left with loose ends. She was frankly glad
to discover that there were so many matters requiring her attention;
otherwise the blank occasioned in her life by Magda's absence would have
been almost unendurable.

The two girls had grown very much into each other's hearts during the
years they had shared together, and when friends part, no matter how big
a wrench the separation may mean to the one who goes, there is a special
kind of sadness reserved for the one who is left behind. For the one who
sets out there are fresh faces, new activities in store. Even though
the new life adventured upon may not prove to be precisely a bed of
thornless roses, the pricking of the thorns p