The portress was a heavy sleeper, and I knew where her keys hung, on a nail just within the door of her cell.  I stole thither, unlatched the door, seized the keys and crept barefoot down the corridor.  The bolts of the cloister-door were stiff and heavy, and I dragged at them till the veins in my wrists were bursting.  Then I turned the key and it cried out in the ward.  I stood still, my whole body beating with fear lest the hinges too should have a voice—­but no one stirred, and I pushed open the door and slipped out.  The garden was as airless as a pit, but at least I could stretch my arms in it; and, oh, my Father, the sweetness of the stars!  The stones in the path cut my feet as I ran, but I thought of the joy of bathing them in the tank, and that made the wounds sweet to me. . . .  My Father, I have heard of the temptations which in times past assailed the holy Solitaries of the desert, flattering the reluctant flesh beyond resistance; but none, I think, could have surpassed in ecstasy that first touch of the water on my limbs.  To prolong the joy I let myself slip in slowly, resting my hands on the edge of the tank, and smiling to see my body, as I lowered it, break up the shining black surface and shatter the starbeams into splinters.  And the water, my Father, seemed to crave me as I craved it.  Its ripples rose about me, first in furtive touches, then in a long embrace that clung and drew me down; till at length they lay like kisses on my lips.  It was no frank comrade like the mountain pools of my childhood, but a secret playmate compassionating my pains and soothing them with noiseless hands.  From the first I thought of it as an accomplice—­its whisper seemed to promise me secrecy if I would promise it love.  And I went back and back to it, my Father; all day I lived in the thought of it; each night I stole to it with fresh thirst. . . .

But at length the old portress died, and a young lay-sister took her place.  She was a light sleeper, and keen-eared; and I knew the danger of venturing to her cell.  I knew the danger, but when darkness came I felt the water drawing me.  The first night I fought on my bed and held out; but the second I crept to her door.  She made no motion when I entered, but rose up secretly and stole after me; and the second night she warned the Abbess, and the two came on me as I stood by the tank.

I was punished with terrible penances:  fasting, scourging, imprisonment, and the privation of drinking water; for the Abbess stood amazed at the obduracy of my sin, and was resolved to make me an example to my fellows.  For a month I endured the pains of hell; then one night the Saracen pirates fell on our convent.  On a sudden the darkness was full of flames and blood; but while the other nuns ran hither and thither, clinging to the Abbess’s feet or shrieking on the steps of the altar, I slipped through an unwatched postern and made my way to the hills.  The next day the Emperor’s soldiery