Summary

Sister Illuminata remembers a moment in her past, during her time working at a sanitarium upstate, when she tries to seek a brief reprieve in the solitude of a cottage nearby. She notices that there is a man and a woman "pressed together in a corner of the hot room" (185), and sees their naked bodies. Sister Illuminata turns away from them and thinks "there is a hunger" (186). The woman dies within a month. Sister Illuminata recognizes that the man who made love to her is an old doctor. In the present, Sister Illuminata and Sister Lucy talk about moving to a larger property. Sister Illuminata thinks of it as a "worldly ambition" (188) of Sister Lucy's. Sister Illuminata thinks that she needs Annie's help in the laundry and that she is getting too old to work on her own. Sister Lucy suggests Annie...