e immersed in my spiritual exercises.

I spent much of my time reading religious books--the life of Saint
Teresa, the meditations of Saint Francis of Sales, and, above all, the
letters and prayers of our Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, whose love of
the Sacred Heart was like a flaming torch to my excited spirit.

The soul of Rome, too, seemed to enter into my soul--not the new Rome,
for of that I knew nothing, but the old Rome, the holy city, that could
speak to me in the silence of the night within the walls of my
convent-school, with its bells of the Dominican and Franciscan
monasteries on either side, its stories of miracles performed on the
sick and dying by the various shrines of the Madonna, its accounts of
the vast multitudes of the faithful who came from all ends of the earth
to the ceremonials at St. Peter's, and, above all, its sense of the
immediate presence of the Pope, half a mile away, the Vicar and
mouthpiece of God Himself.

The end of it all was that I wished to become a nun. I said nothing of
my desire to anybody, not even to the Reverend Mother, but day by day my
resolution grew.

Perhaps it was natural that the orphaned and homeless girl should plunge
with all this passion into the aurora of a new spiritual life; but when
I think how my nature was made for love, human love, the love of husband
and children, I cannot but wonder with a thrill of the heart whether my
mother in heaven, who, while she was on earth, had fought so hard with
my father for the body of her child, was now fighting with him for her
soul.

I was just eighteen years of age when my desire to become a nun reached
its highest point, and then received its final overthrow.

Mildred Bankes, who had returned to Rome, and was living as a novice
with the Little Sisters of the Poor, was about to make her vows, and the
Reverend Mother took me to see the ceremony.

Never shall I forget the effect of it. The sweet summer morning,
tingling with snow-white sunshine, the little white chapel in the
garden of the Convent, covered with flowers, the altar with its lighted
tapers, the friends from without clad in gay costumes as for a festival,
the bishop in his bright vestments, and then, Mildred herself, dressed
as a bride in a beautiful white gown with a long white veil and attended
by other novices as bridesmaids.

It was just like a marriage to look upon, except for the absence of a
visible bridegroom, the invisible one being Christ. And