Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/149

 to rise vividly in her soul at the sight of the black-veiled heads around her. Now she was in the class-room, working out some problem on the blackboard. Now she was preparing for her first communion. Again it was Graduation day, and she was reading her valedictory to her assembled friends. Several of the sentences came back to her and were repeated. Through it all there blossomed the rose-hued memory of home—home—home. She was leaving home, or she was coming home, but of the black years that lay between the departure and the return there was not one word.

"She is going fast," reflected Dr. Raymond.

The voices of the distant choir, singing in the chapel, rose mournfully on the music of Millard's Mass. The Convent Girl sat up in bed, her eyes ablaze with sudden excitement.

"Singing!" she cried again. "Why don't I sing? I know that music. I sang it in white. Oui, mes amis! Attendez." And then, from the lips which had sung the songs that disgraced the French stage, the music she had learned years ago from Sister Cecilia flowed like a prayer.

"Qui tollis, Qui tollis, Qui tollis peccata mundi—"

To the listeners, knowing not what was to come, it was as if the mouth of a sewer had