That is the first bell for vespers."

She hurried away, forgetting all about Evelyn, leaving her to find her
way back to her room as best she could. But Evelyn found Sister Mary
John waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. She had come back for
her, she had just remembered her, and Sister Mary John apologised for
her absence of mind, and seemed distressed at her apparent rudeness.
They walked a little way together, and the nun explained that it was not
her fault; her absence of mind was an inheritance from her father.
Everything she had she had inherited from him--"my love of music and my
absence of mind."

She was intensely herself, quaint, eccentric, but she was, Evelyn
reflected, perhaps more distinctly from the English upper classes than
any of the nuns she had seen yet. She had not the sweetness of manner of
the Reverend Mother, her manners were the oddest; but withal she had
that refinement which Evelyn had first noticed in Owen, and afterwards
in his friends, that style which is inheritance, which tradition alone
can give. She had spoken of her father, and Evelyn could easily imagine
Sister Mary John's father--a lord of old lineage dwelling in an
eighteenth century house in the middle of a flat park in the Midlands.
She could see a piece of artificial lake obtained by the damming of a
small stream; one end full of thick reeds, in which the chatter of wild
ducks was unceasing. But her family, her past, her name--all was lost in
the convent, in the veil. The question was, had she renounced the world,
or had she refused the world? Evelyn could not even conjecture. Sister
Mary John was outside not only of her experience, but also of her
present perception of things. Evelyn wondered why one of such marked
individuality, of such intense personal will, had chosen a life the very
_raison d'etre_ of which was the merging of the individual will in the
will of the community? Why should one, the essential delight of whose
life was music, choose a life in which music hardly appeared? Was her
piety so great that it absorbed every other inclination? Sister Mary
John did not strike her as being especially religious. What instinct
behind those brown eyes had led her to this sacrifice? Apparently at
pains to conceal nothing, Sister Mary John concealed the essential.
Evelyn could even imagine her as being attractive to men--that radiant
smile, the beautiful teeth, and the tall, supple figure, united to that
distinct personali