elling our names. Mine is Sister
Hagar."

"Hagar!" I exclaimed. "You do not mean that is your real name?"

"It is the name given me by the House of Martha," she answered. "There
is a list of names by which the sisters must be called, and as we enter
the institution we take the names in their order on the list. Hagar came
to me."

"I shall not call you by that," said I, "and we may as well go on with
our work."

I was anxious to have her read, and to forget that she was called Hagar.

She was a long time arranging the manuscript and putting the pages in
order. I did not hurry her, but I could not see any reason for so much
preparation. Presently she said, still arranging the sheets, and with
her head bent slightly over her work: "I don't know whether or not I
ought to tell you, but I dislike to be called Hagar. The next name on
the list is Rebecca, and I am willing to take that, but the rules of the
House do not allow us to skip an unappropriated name, and permit no
choosing. However, Mother Anastasia has not pressed the matter, and,
although I am entered as Sister Hagar, the sisters do not call me by
that name."

"What do they call you?"

"Oh, they simply use the name that was mine before I entered the House
of Martha," said she.

"And what is that?" I asked quickly.

"Ah," said my nun, pushing her sheets into a compact pile, and thumping
their edges on the table to make them even, "to talk about that would be
decidedly against the rules of the institution;--and now I am ready to
read."

Thus did she punish me for what she considered my want of curiosity or
interest; I knew it as well as if she had told me so. I accepted the
rebuff and said no more, and she went on with her reading.

On this and the following day I became aware how infinitely more
pleasant it was to listen than to be listened to,--at least under
certain circumstances. I considered it wonderfully fortunate to be able
to talk to such an admirable listener as Walkirk: but to sit and hear my
nun read; to watch the charming play of her mouth, and the occasional
flush of a smile when she came to something exciting or humorous; to
look into the blue of her eyes, as she raised them to me while I
considered an alteration, was to me an overwhelming rapture,--I could
call it nothing less. But by the end of the third morning of reading my
good sense told me that this sort of thing could not go on, and it would
be judicious for me to begin again my di