pay for her room at the end of the week, and her food was never certain.  How little it was, yet to get it caused her hours and hours of weary labour.  Three and sixpence a week was all she could earn.  Poor Lena, what has become of her?  So little of the money which my singing brings to the convent would secure her against starvation, yet I cannot send her a penny.  Doesn’t it seem hard, Monsignor?  And if she were to die in my absence would not the memory of my desertion haunt me for ever?  Should I be able to forgive myself?  You will answer that to save one’s soul is everybody’s first concern, but to sacrifice one’s own soul for the poor may not be theological, but it would be sublime.  You who are so kind, Monsignor, will not reprove me for writing in this strain, writing heresy to you from a convent devoted to the Perpetual Adoration of the Sacrament, but you will understand, and will write something that will hearten me, for I am a little disheartened to-day.  You will write, perhaps, to the Reverend Mother, asking her if I may send Lena some money; that would be a great boon if she would allow it.  In my anxiety to escape from the consequences of my own sins I had almost forgotten this poor girl, but yesterday she came into my mind.  It was the lay sisters who reminded me of the poor people I left; the lay sisters are what is most beautiful in the convent.

“Yesterday, when the grass was soaked with dew and the crisp leaves hung in a death-like silence, one of them, Sister Bridget, came down the path carrying a pail of water, ‘going,’ she said, answering me, ’to scrub the tiles which covered the late Reverend Mother’s grave.  Ah, well, Mother’s room must have its weekly turn out.’  How beautiful is the use of the word ‘room’ in the phrase, and when I pointed out to her that the tiles were still clean her answer was that she regarded the task of attending the grave not as a duty but as a privilege.  Dear Sister Bridget, withered and ruddy like an apple, has worked in the community for nearly thirty years.  She has been through all the early years of struggle:  a struggle which has begun again—­a struggle the details of which were not even told her, and which she has no curiosity to hear.  She is content to work on to the end, believing that it was God’s will for her to do so.  The lay sisters can aspire to none of the convent offices; they have none of the smaller distractions of receiving guests, and instructing converts and so forth, and not to have as much time for prayer as they desire is their penance.  They are humble folk, who strive in a humble way to separate themselves from the animal, and they see heaven from the wash-tub plainly.  In the eyes of the world they are ignorant and simple hearts.  They are ignorant, but of what are they ignorant?  Only of the passing show, which every moment crumbles and perishes.  I see them as I write—­their ready smiles and their touching humility.  They are humble workers in a humble vineyard, and they are content that it should be so.”