feeling of security and well-being. Sometimes she would sit and talk
with me about the battles, and lead me into chats about my mother, who
was ill herself at this time and not able to come to see me.

How old was Sister Gabrielle? Oh, I suppose she must have been about
twenty-four or five then, perhaps a little more. She had the Norman
blue eyes and a fair complexion, which the white wrappings about her
face seemed to heighten and irradiate. Is it the white lawn, or is it a
beauty that the self-denying life lends to them which makes the faces
of so many of those women look so lovely? I called Sister Gabrielle an
angel just now, but you must not fancy there was any cold saintliness
about her; in fact, it was her very ready sympathy with all my accounts
of my young life in the outer world that drew out my heart towards her.
It was her very womanliness that soon set me wondering who she could
have been, and what had led her to shut herself away from the world.
There was little to do, lying there in bed week after week, and
hundreds of times, as I looked at that sweet woman moving about the
room, I pictured her without the coif, and said to myself that if she
were not then a beloved wife, with a husband's protecting arm around
her, and children climbing about her knees, it was not because the love
that should have led to this had been wanting, but certainly because
some marring chance had prevented the realization of such happiness. It
amused me to make a pretty history to myself, with Sister Gabrielle for
the heroine. A woman with a voice like hers and such a smile was bound
to have loved deeply and to have inspired deep love. Sometimes, when
she was not speaking, her eyes had a sad, far-away look. I can only
compare it to the look that an emigrant who was toiling along a hot,
dusty highroad to embark for a new country might turn and give to the
dear spot that he had said a long good-bye to. But that look never
lasted more than a minute in Sister Gabrielle's face. It was as if the
traveller settled his burden afresh on his shoulders, and, with fresh,
vigorous resolution, stepped on into the long expanse of road that went
stretching away to the horizon.

One day--I could not help it--I broke into one of those little reveries
of hers.

'My sister,' I said, 'sweet and beautiful as you are, how is it that
you never married?'

With lifted finger, as one speaks to a too daring child, she said only
'Ssshh!' Then, with the m