d
Mother Philippa lingered by a distant corner of the garden marked by
nine tall crosses.

"When I was here there were but six. I remember Sister Bonaventure, thin
and white, and so weak that she could not move. She was dying far from
all she knew, yet she was quite happy. It was we who were unhappy."

"She was happy, for her thoughts were set upon God. How could she be
otherwise than happy when she knew she was going to him?"

A few minutes after, Evelyn was bidding the nuns good-night. The
Reverend Mother hoped that when she made another retreat she would be
their guest. Mother Philippa was disappointed that they had not heard
her sing. Perhaps one day she might sing to them. They would see how it
could be arranged: perhaps at Benediction when she came to make another
retreat. Evelyn smiled, and the carriage passed into the night.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The dawn crept through her closed eyelids, and burying her face in the
pillows, she sought to retain the receding dream.

But out of the gloom which she divined and through which a face looked,
a face which she could not understand, but which she must follow, there
came a sound as of someone moving. The dream dissolved in the sound, she
opened her eyes, and upon her lips there was terror, and she could not
move.... Nor did she dare to look, and when her eyes turned towards the
doorway she could not see beyond it; she could not remember if she had
left the door ajar. Shadows gathered, and again came the awful sound of
someone; she slipped under the bedclothes, and lay there stark, frozen
with terror. When she summoned sufficient courage, she looked towards
the shadowy doorway, but the passage beyond it was filled with nameless
foreboding shapes from an under-world; and the thought that the sound
she had heard had been caused by her clothes slipping from a chair
failed to reassure her. She was as cold as a corpse in a grave. She felt
that it was her duty to explore the dark, but to get out of bed to stand
in that grey room and look into the passage was more than she dared; she
could only lie still and endure the sensation of hands at her throat and
breath above her face.

A little later she was able to distinguish the pattern of the
wall-paper, and as she followed its design human life seemed black and
intolerably loathsome. She strove against the thought, but she saw the
creature leer so plainly that there was no way of escaping from the
conviction that