rebuffal of her kisses, by a stern command of silence, first imposed
and then as often blamed; by inward tears that dared not flow but
stayed within the heart; in short, by all the bitterness and tyranny
of convent rule, hidden to the eyes of the world under the appearance
of an exalted motherly devotion. She gratified her mother's vanity
before strangers, but she dearly paid in private for this homage.
When, believing that by obedience and gentleness she had softened her
mother's heart, she opened hers, the tyrant only armed herself with
the girl's confidence. No spy was ever more traitorous and base. All
the pleasures of girlhood, even her fete days, were dearly purchased,
for she was scolded for her gaiety as much as for her faults. No
teaching and no training for her position had been given in love,
always with sarcastic irony. She was not angry against her mother; in
fact she blamed herself for feeling more terror than love for her.
"Perhaps," she said, dear angel, "these severities were needful; they
had certainly prepared her for her present life." As I listened it
seemed to me that the harp of Job, from which I had drawn such savage
sounds, now touched by the Christian fingers gave forth the litanies
of the Virgin at the foot of the cross.

"We lived in the same sphere before we met in this," I said; "you
coming from the east, I from the west."

She shook her head with a gesture of despair.

"To you the east, to me the west," she replied. "You will live happy,
I must die of pain. Life is what we make of it, and mine is made
forever. No power can break the heavy chain to which a woman is
fastened by this ring of gold--the emblem of a wife's purity."