arrived in Rome before the
great fact befell me which was to wipe all other facts out of my
remembrance.

It was Holy Week, the season of all seasons for devotion to the Sacred
Heart, and our Convent was palpitating with the joy of its spiritual
duties, the many offices, the masses for the repose of the souls in
Purgatory, the preparations for Tenebrae, with the chanting of the
Miserere, and for Holy Saturday and Easter Day, with the singing of the
Gloria and the return of the Alleluia.

But beyond all this for me were the arrangements for my first
confession, which, coming a little late, I made with ten or twelve other
girls of my sodality, feeling so faint when I took my turn and knelt by
the grating, and heard the whispering voice within, like something from
the unseen, something supernatural, something divine, that I forgot all
I had come to say and the priest had to prompt me.

And beyond that again were the arrangements for my first communion,
which was to take place on Easter morning, when I was to walk in
procession with the other girls, dressed all in white, behind a gilded
figure of the Virgin, singing "Ave maris stella," through the piazza
into the church, where one of the Cardinals, in the presence of the
fathers and mothers of the other children, was to put the Holy Wafer on
our tongues and we were to know for the first time the joy of communion
with our Lord.

But that was not to be for me.

On the morning of Holy Wednesday the blow fell. The luminous grey of the
Italian dawn was filtering through the windows of the dormitory, like
the light in a tomb, and a multitude of little birds on the old tree in
the garden were making a noise like water falling on small stones in a
fountain, when the Mother of the Novices came to my bedside and said:

"You are to go to the Reverend Mother as soon as possible, my child."

Her voice, usually severe, was so soft that I knew something had
happened, and when I went downstairs I also knew, before the Reverend
Mother had spoken, what she was going to say.

"Mary," she said, "I am Sorry to tell you that your mother is ill."

I listened intently, fearing that worse would follow.

"She is very ill--very seriously ill, and she wishes to see you.
Therefore you are to go home immediately."

The tears sprang to my eyes, and the Reverend Mother drew me to her side
and laid my head on her breast and comforted me, saying my dear mother
had lived the life of a good Chris