Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/242

 Reverend Mother decides, but I should be glad to have your own heart select now what later may be imposed as obedience."

Sister Cuthbert sank upon her knees and laid her forehead against the carved arm of the chair from which her superior had risen. Tears poured from her eyes.

"Forgive me," she said, chokingly. "Forgive me—and may God forgive me. I was selfish; I thought only of myself. I must stay. And I will pray for my dear mother here—" she stopped. The older woman slipped a strong hand under her arm and helped her to her feet.

"You have chosen wisely," she said. "It is well that you made this sacrifice voluntarily—well, indeed. But your ordeal may come later. Go to the chapel and pray for strength to bear it."

She heard the door close and the soft steps of the novice recede in the distance. There was an unusually mild expression in her keen gray eyes as she went to the Mother Superior with the two letters. She submitted them without a word.

In the dim chapel of the convent Sister Cuthbert knelt before the altar and prayed chokingly. In her short, serene life no such grief as this had come to her before, and the