er seemed not only unfair, but disloyal. Yet it was
the bounden duty of the Mother to study the characters of all who
lived under her authority and direction, and to forestall their
possible shortcomings by a warning, an admonition, or an encouraging
word, as the case might be.

She had done what she could, but she was dissatisfied with herself;
and at the very moment when Angela was inwardly repeating her stirring
words and committing them to memory for her lifetime, the woman who
had spoken them was tormented by the thought that she had not said
half enough, or still worse, that she had perhaps made a mistake
altogether. For the first time since she had fought her first great
battle with herself, she had the sensation of being near a mysterious
force of nature which she did not understand; but she had been twenty
years younger then, and the present issue was not to depend on her own
strength but on another's, and it involved the salvation of another's
soul.

It was long before she bent over the columns of figures again, yet she
did not reproach herself with having wasted time. The first of all her
many duties, and the most arduous, was to think for others; to work
for them was a hundred times easier and was rest and refreshment by
contrast.

Angela would have been very much surprised if she could have known
what was passing in the Mother Superior's mind, while she herself felt
nothing but relief and satisfaction because her decision had now
become irrevocable. If she had been bidden to wait another year, she
would have waited patiently and without a murmur, because she could
not be satisfied with anything less than apparent certainty; but
instead, she had been encouraged to take the final step, after which
there could be no return.

That was the inevitable. Human destiny is most tragic when the men and
women concerned are doing their very utmost to act bravely and
uprightly, while each is in reality bringing calamity on the other.

Acting on the only evidence she had a right to trust, the Mother
Superior knew that she would not be justified in hindering Angela from
taking the veil. Few had ever done so well in the noviciate, none had
ever done better, and her natural talent for the profession of nursing
was altogether unusual. There had never been one like her in the
hospital. As for her character, she seemed to have no vanity, no
jealousy, no temper, no moodiness. The Mother had never known such an
even and we