Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/29

 remote as if it had been lived on another planet and in another age, but now suddenly and vibratingly real again. She and Jack had been happy together in those old days. She was living them over once more one warm spring afternoon while a lesson by Professor Varick was in progress. The murmur of the girls' voices was in her ears, the scent of the convent garden came through the open windows, but all this seemed vague and dream-like. The real things were that pleasant barytone voice, so full of elusive memories, and that face, coming back to her at first dimly, then clearly out of the mist of years.

Sister Edgar suddenly leaned back in her chair. Of course it was Jack's old friend, Arthur Varick, whose very name she had forgotten, but now recalled with a rush of other memories. He was much changed in the fourteen years since they had last met, but he was unmistakably Arthur Varick. His face was older, which was only natural, and very worn and sad, which seemed unnatural when she recalled the blithe youth she had known. She could almost hear again the boyish laughter that had so often come to her ears, in those old days, from the haunts where he and Jack were to be found around her father's home.