Page:The Painted Veil - Maugham - 1925.djvu/241

 wanted to stay because she had nowhere else to go. It was a curious sensation this, that nobody in the world cared two straws whether she was alive or dead.

“I cannot understand that you should be reluctant to go home,” pursued the Superior amiably. “There are many foreigners in this country who would give a great deal to have your chance!”

“But not you, Mother?”

“Oh, with us it is different, my dear child. When we come here we know that we have left our homes for ever.”

Out of her own wounded feelings emerged the desire in Kitty’s mind, malicious perhaps, to seek the joint in the armour of faith which rendered the nuns so aloofly immune to all the natural feelings. She wanted to see whether there was left in the Superior any of the weakness of humanity.

“I should have thought that sometimes it was hard never to see again those that are dear to you and the scenes amid which you were brought up.”

The Mother Superior hesitated for a moment, but Kitty watching her could see no change in the serenity of her beautiful and austere face.

“It is hard for my mother who is old now, for I am her only daughter and she would dearly like to see me once more before she dies. I wish I could give her that joy. But it cannot be and we shall wait till we can meet in paradise.”

“All the same, when one thinks of those to whom one is so dear, it must be difficult not to ask oneself if one was right in cutting oneself off from them.”