Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/33

 sending her to the convent at Adola, among the pines. Please speak to her about this, and tell me if it would please her."

When the subject of the removal to the pines was broached to Sister Edgar she was so evidently unwilling to go that the idea was at once abandoned. Sister George was not surprised. She had not loved this friend for years without knowing her almost as well as she knew herself. There was something in the other's heart from which she was now shut out. She did not know what it was, but she knew that it existed, and she was content to accept silently and patiently Sister Edgar's reserve.

June came, and the invalid was obliged to abandon her class work. For weeks she had dragged herself from her cell to the class-room and from the class-room back to the cell at the close of the day, with no strength for further effort. Then she had been absent a day, a few days, and again a week, coming back each time with the cheerful assurance that she was "better," given in a voice whose sweetness was almost gone. The pupils followed it all with comprehending eyes. Even the younger ones had seen it many times before.

"They all go that way," said May Iverson, resentfully, to a classmate. "That awful