VI.

I RUN UPON A SANDBAR.

Day by day, the interest of my nun in her work appeared to increase.
Every morning, so soon as she sat down at her table, she read to me the
concluding portion of what had been written the day before; and if a
Sunday intervened, she gave me a page or more. Her interest was
manifested in various ways. Several times she so far forgot the
instructions she must have received as to turn her face towards me, when
asking me to repeat something that she did not catch, and on such
occasions I could not for some moments remember what I had said, or
indeed what I was about to say.

Once she stopped writing, and, turning half round in her chair, looked
fairly at me, and said that she thought I had made a mistake in saying
that visitors were not allowed to go up the Tower of Pisa without a
guide; for she, with two other ladies, had gone to the top without any
one accompanying them. But she thought it was very wrong to allow people
to do this, and that I should be doing a service to travelers if I were
to say something on the subject.

Of course I replied that I would make the correction, and that I would
say something about the carelessness to which she referred. Then there
ensued a pause, during which she turned her face towards the window,
imagining, I have no doubt, that I was busy endeavoring to compose
something suitable to say upon the subject; but I was not thinking of
anything of the sort. I was allowing my mind to revel in the delight
which I had had in looking at her while she spoke. When her pen began to
scratch impatiently upon the paper, I plunged into some sort of a homily
on the laxity of vigilance in leaning towers. But, even while dictating
this, I was wondering what she would look like if, instead of that gray
shawl and gown, she were arrayed in one of the charming costumes which
often make even ordinary young ladies so attractive.

As our daily work went on, my nun relaxed more frequently her proscribed
rigidity, and became more and more like an ordinary person. When she
looked at me or spoke, she always did so in such an unpremeditated
manner, and with such an obvious good reason, that I could not determine
whether her change of manner was due to accumulative forgetfulness, or
to a conviction that it was absurd to continue to act a part which was
not only unnatural under the circumstances, but which positively
interfered with the work in hand. Some of her suggestions were of the