Page:The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Grossett & Dunlap).pdf/233

 two persons whom she loved in the same accident. Her sewing fell from her hand: then she would know, she would explain. “But no, what would she say to me! She would not even believe that such a person as I could love or could lose.” Camila decided to go to Lima and look at the Abbess from a distance. “If her face tells me that she would not despise me, I will speak to her,” she said.

Camila lurked about the convent church and fell humbly in love with the homely old face, though it frightened her a little. At last she called upon her.

“Mother,” she said, “I I ”

“Do I know you, my daughter?”

“I was the actress, I was the Perichole.”

“Oh, yes. Oh, I have wished to know you for a long while, but they told me you did not wish to be seen. You too, I know, lost in the fall of the bridge of San”

Camila rose and swayed. There! again that ac-