"Thee among the lilies feeding
Choirs of virgins walk beside,
Bridegroom crowned with glorious beauty
Giving beauty to thy bride.

"Where thou goest still they follow
Singing, singing as they move,
All those souls forever virgin
Wedded only to thy love."]

This little canticle was, in truth, very different from the hymns
to Venus which used to resound in the temple which the convent had
displaced. The voices which sang were of a deep, plaintive contralto,
much resembling the richness of a tenor, and us they moved in modulated
waves of chanting sound the effect was soothing and dreamy. Agnes
stopped at the door to listen.

"Stop, dear Jocunda," she said to the old woman, who was about to push
her way abruptly into the room, "wait till it is over."

Jocunda, who was quite matter-of-fact in her ideas of religion, made a
little movement of impatience, but was recalled to herself by observing
the devout absorption with which Agnes, with clasped hands and downcast
head, was mentally joining in the hymn with a solemn brightness in her
young face.

"If she hasn't got a vocation, nobody ever had one," said Jocunda,
mentally. "Deary me, I wish I had more of one myself!"

When the strain died away, and was succeeded by a conversation on the