watch-bracelet on her wrist--"How late it is!--nearly all the
morning gone! I have kept you so long listening to my talk--forgive
me! I will run away now and leave you to think about my 'intervals'
of happiness,--will you?--they are so few compared to yours!"

"Mine?" he echoed amazedly.

"Yes, indeed!--yours! Your whole life is an interval of happiness
between this world and the next, because you are satisfied in the
service of God!"

"A poor service!" he said, turning his gaze away from her elfin
figure and shining hair--"Unworthy,--shameful!--marred by sin at
every moment! A priest of the Church must learn to do without
happiness such as ordinary life can give--and without love,--such as
woman may give--but--after all--the sacrifice is little."

She smiled at him, sweetly--tenderly,

"Very little!" she said--"So little that it is not worth a regret!
Good-bye! But not for long! Come and see me soon!"

Moving across the cloister with her light step she seemed to float
through the sunshine like a part of it, and as she disappeared a
kind of shadow fell, though no cloud obscured the sun. Don Aloysius
watched her till she had vanished,--then turned aside into a small
chapel opening out on the cloistered square--a chapel which formed
part of the monastic house to which he belonged as Superior,--and
there, within that still, incense-sweetened sanctuary, he knelt
before the noble, pictured Head of the Man of Sorrows in silent