Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/32

 Miss Iverson, she knew, had several times met him socially. But the girl did not mention him, and the nun reproached herself, with a deepening of the color in her cheeks, for having hoped that she might do so. The incident had in it a warning which she would have heeded had she been stronger or happier. As it was, she asked herself a little vaguely if she were drifting from the letter or the spirit of her vows, if this interest in the outer world was too deep, if she were losing the religious faith that had been strong enough to bring her where she was. She told herself that she was not. She taught and prayed and did the work allotted to her, and waited for the end. Her thoughts and memories were her own. If she chose to retire into the past during these last months of life, who could question her right to do so?

The change that had come upon her had not been unobserved. The Mother Superior noticed and commented upon her added brightness.

"Do you think that Sister Edgar is improving?" she had asked Sister George, with kindly interest. "Perhaps, after all, she may not be as ill as we feared. Possibly we may even hope to keep her with us, if our Father wills. I have had some thought," she went on, "of