hat would have been a
natural and human impulse; nor was it because she felt herself drawn
to an existence of asceticism and mystic meditation.

The prospect of work was what attracted her. She was a perfectly
healthy-minded girl, and though she might never cease to mourn the man
she had loved, it was to be foreseen that in all other respects she
might recover entirely from the terrible shock and live out a normal
life. Under ordinary circumstances that is what would have happened;
she would have gone back to the world after a time, outwardly the
same, though inwardly changed in so far as all possibilities of love
and marriage were concerned; she would have lived in society, year
after year, growing old gracefully and tenderly, as some unmarried
women do whose stories we never knew or have forgotten, but whose
hearts are far away, watching for the great To-morrow, beside a dead
man's grave, or praying before an altar whence the god has departed.
They are women whom we never call 'old maids,' perhaps because we feel
that in memory they are sharing their lives with a well-loved
companion whom we cannot see. That might have been Angela's future.

But a brutal fact put such a possibility out of the question. She was
a destitute orphan, living on the charity of her former governess,
whereas her nature was independent, brave, and self-reliant. When she
rose above the wave that had overwhelmed her, and opened her eyes and
found her senses again, her instinct was to strike out for herself,
and though she talked with Monsignor Saracinesca again and again, she
had really made up her mind after her first conversation with him. She
saw that she must work for her living, but at the same time she longed
to devote her life to some good work for Giovanni's sake. The
churchman told her that if she could learn to nurse the sick, she
might accomplish both ends.

He never suggested that she should become a nun, or take upon herself
any permanent obligation. He had seen much of human nature; the girl
was very young, and perhaps he underrated the strength of her love for
the dead man, and thought that she might yet marry happily and live a
normal woman's life. But there was no reason why she should not become
a trained nurse in the meantime, and there was room for her in the
nuns' hospital of Saint Joan of Aza, an institution which owes its
first beginnings and much of its present success to the protection of
the Saracinesca family, and m