Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/193

 row of candidates for the veil rose and knelt, and made their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, while those who loved them, kneeling in the pews behind, looked on with aching hearts.

Suddenly a bell sounded, followed by the soft, muffled fall of the fifty Sisters who were to pronounce their vows, prostrating themselves on the chapel floor. Lay Sisters stretched a great black pall over them, covering them all. In its centre was a white cross, and this, with the outlined figures of the young nuns beneath the sombre cloth, had a strange suggestion of a group of graves. Above the Sisters, dead to the world from this time forth, moaned the cloister's musical farewell to the mundane joys of life.

Sister Patience lay on her face with the others and waited for the signal to rise. At first she had no thought of self. During the early part of the service she had been impressed by the persistent sobs of one person, a woman, and she had sympathized vaguely with an other's sorrow. She knew it was not for her. Not one in all that great throng mourned for her. But in her excited mental state this weeping, heart-rending enough in itself, took on an emblematic meaning. Strange fancies filled her mind. She wondered if that was the weak