the song, and her lips seemed to achieve sculpture. The
lines of a Greek vase seemed to rise before the eye, and the voice
swelled on from note to note with the noble movement of the bas-relief
decoration of the vase. The harmonious interludes which Sister Mary John
played aided the excitement, and the nuns, who knelt in two grey lines,
were afraid to look up. In a remote consciousness they feared it was not
right to feel so keenly; the harmonious depth of the voice entered their
very blood, summoning visions of angel faces. But it was an old man with
a white beard that Veronica saw, a hermit in the wilderness; she was
bringing him vestments, and when the vision vanished Evelyn was singing
the opening phrase, now a little altered on the words Santa Maria.

There came the little duet between the voice and the organ, in which any
want of precision on the part of Sister Mary John would spoil the effect
of the song; but the nun's right hand answered Evelyn in perfect
concord. And then began the runs introduced in the Amen in order to
exhibit the skill of the singer. The voice was no longer a 'cello, deep
and resonant, but a lonely flute or silver bugle announcing some joyous
reverie in a landscape at the close of day. The song closed on the
keynote, and Sister Mary John turned from the instrument and looked at
the singer. She could not speak, she seemed overpowered by the music,
and like one more dreaming than waking, and sitting half turned round on
her seat, she looked at Evelyn.

"You sing beautifully," she said. "I never heard singing before."

And she sat like one stupefied, still hearing Evelyn's singing in her
brain, until one of the sisters advanced close and said, "Sister, we
must sing the 'Tantum ergo.'"

"Of course we must. I believe if you hadn't reminded me I should have
forgotten it. Gracious! I don't know what it will sound like after
singing like that. But you'll lead them?"

Evelyn hummed the plain chant under her breath, afraid lest she should
extinguish the pale voices, and surprised how expressive the antique
chant was when sung by these etiolated, sexless voices. She had never
known how much of her life of passion and desire had entered into her
voice, and she was shocked at its impurity. Her singing sounded like
silken raiment among sackcloth, and she lowered her voice, feeling it to
be indecorous and out of place in the antique hymn. Her voice, she felt,
must have revealed her past life to the nun