d.

"I love you much, Sacha; you are honest. Au revoir. God be with you."

"Where are you going?" exclaimed the general's wife. "What! Without
taking tea. I won't let you go. After tea they will put up for you a
basket of preserves to take to the abbess, that good soul. She prefers
quince-preserve. As for you, I don't offer you any; you have renounced
all these luxuries; you no longer belong to this world!"

And once more her cheeks began to quiver and her green eyes grew moist.

"How charming you were at school! Tall, well-shaped, like a figure in
Dresden china. Do you ever remember the school, Sister Helene?"

"Yes, of course," said Helene, with an abstracted air, only
half-attending to her.

"I remember they had brought you from far away--the Caucasus, wasn't it?
They had written to me, I remember."

The nun bent her head in order to hide her disturbance of mind. When she
raised it again, she had grown still paler, and her sad eyes showed
physical pain controlled with difficulty. But the general's wife, who
never paused to notice anything, did not guess at her trouble. She had
risen, and stuttering very fast, said, "This evening we will give you a
musical treat. I know you love music, Helene, and that is not a sin. I
think there was a saint--what was her name?"

"Saint Cecilia," said the governess.

"Yes, precisely. She was a musician, and yet she has been canonized; you
will find it in books."

Helene remained. She felt an irresistible desire to hear
music--something besides the human voice or the voice of her heart.

"Is it you who will play?" she said, approaching Sacha.

"Yes; tell me what you prefer; I only warn you that I don't play
anything very serious."

"Play something that I have not yet heard; all that calls up
associations of the past makes me feel poorly. During the four years
that I have been at the convent you must have learnt many things which I
don't know. You know, perhaps, Beethoven's Sonata 'Quasi una fantasia.'"

"Certainly. Would you like to hear it? 'It is an old piece that is
always new,' our musical professor used to say."

"Yes. To-day I feel drawn to it, though I know it will make me suffer."

"Do you know that it is a little alarming to see you as a nun? Why
should it be? Our family has been always given to religion; my
grandmother entered a convent at the close of her days; and my mother
spent her days in visiting the Holy Places."

Sacha went to the piano and the gen