Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/95

 and the great convent lay dark and lonely within its gray walls? Would the nun, in her stone cell, sleep in peace? Or might there not be, after the strain of the day and its last farewells, some haunting fears and doubts that raised their heads too late?

The postulant had risen, and her friends pressed forward. The last farewells were to be spoken in a small room adjoining the chapel. They were to be last farewells in very truth. Never again would Dolores Mendoza, now Sister Ethelbert, touch the lips or the hands of a friend in greeting. Once a year one might speak to her and get a glimpse of her face through the convent bars. But there could be no closer meeting.

They were weeping as they crowded around her in the anteroom, and Ruth Herrick, swept there by the energetic though still subdued Miss Van Orden, felt strangely out of place. She lingered in the background near a little open window that looked into the convent garden. The perfume of old-fashioned flowers filled the air, and she heard the cheerful buzzing of the bees among them. She tried to keep her professional eye not too