Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/94

 practical views of life, could not answer the question. She felt sure that the nun had asked it of herself and had found the reply.

The reporter sank back in the pew and let her eyes rest again on the slender figure kneeling at the prie-dleu in front of the altar railing. The nun's face was buried now in her hands. The train of her white gown swept around her,—a billowy mass of silk and lace that was reflected in the gleaming surface of the polished floor. Her long veil and the orange-blossoms in her hair and on her bosom looked oddly out of place, symbolic though they were of her marriage to the Church. She was the only postulant, but the pomp of the function in her behalf was as great as though many others were taking the veil with her. Miss Herrick looked at the white-robed priests before the altar, listened to the melodious sighing of the organ and the sobs of the women around her, and felt dreamily that all this splendid ceremony was but a proper recognition of the oblation of one brilliant young life. How would it seem that night, she wondered, when the music had ceased and the lights had gone out