at rude and noisy city that looked as if it had been
tossed together in a night after one of its periodical fires, where the
ill-made sidewalks tripped the unwary foot, or the winter mud was like a
swamp, where the alarm bell summoned the Vigilance Committee day and
night to protect or avenge, where a coarse and impertinent set of
adventurers stared at and followed an inoffensive nun who only left the
holy calm of the convent at the command of the Bishop to rescue brands
from the burning; then had Teresa, sick with the tragedy of youth, an
enchanting vision of secluded paths, where nuns--in white--walked with
downcast eyes and folded hands; of the daily ecstasy of prayer in the
convent chapel misty with incense.

And in some inscrutable way Sister Dominica during that long
conversation, while Mrs. Grace and her other daughters dispensed egg-nog
in the parlor--it was New Year's Day--had made the young girl a part of
her very self, until Teresa indulged the fancy that without and within
she was a replica of that Concha Argueello of California's springtime;
won her heart so completely that she would have followed her not only
into the comfortable and incomparably situated convent of the saint of
Siena, but barefooted into that wilderness of Soledad where the Indians
still prayed for their lost "Beata." It was just eight months tonight
since she had taken her first vows, and she had been honestly aware that
there was no very clear line of demarcation in her fervent young mind
between her love of Sister Dominica and her love of God. Tonight, almost
prostrate before the coffin of the dead nun, she knew that so far at
least all the real passion of her youth had flowed in an undeflected
tide about the feet of that remote and exquisite being whose personal
charm alone had made a convent possible in the chaos that followed the
discovery of gold. All the novices, many of the older nuns, the pupils
invariably, worshipped Sister Dominica; whose saintliness without
austerity never chilled them, but whose tragic story and the impression
she made of already dwelling in a heaven of her own, notwithstanding
her sweet and consistent humanity, placed her on a pinnacle where any
display of affection would have been unseemly. Only once, after the
beautiful ceremony of taking the white veil was over, and Teresa's
senses were faint from incense and hunger, ecstasy and a new and
exquisite terror, Sister Dominica had led her to her cell and kissi