had sinned so heavily, oppressed her. The kind proposal of the sick
child's mother seemed like a mockery. It was painful even to hear the
name of Peutinger.

Besides, the further she advanced toward recovery, the more unendurable
appeared the absence of liberty. The kind efforts of the abbess to keep
her in the cloister, and teach her to make herself useful there by
sewing, were unsuccessful; for she could not turn the spinning wheel on
account of her amputated foot, and she had neither inclination nor
patience for the finer branches of needlework.

Those who charged her with a lamentable lack of perseverance were right;
the linen which she began to hem fell into her lap only too soon. When
her eyes--which could see nothing here except a small walled yard--closed
while she was working, the others thought that she was asleep; but her
mind remained awake, though she had lowered her lids, and it wandered
restlessly over valleys rivers, and mountains through the wide, wide
world. She saw herself in imagination travelling along the highway with
nimble jugglers merry musicians, and other care-free vagrant folk,
instead of plying the needle. Even the whirling dust, the rushing wind,
and the refreshing rain outside seemed desirable compared with the heavy
convent air impregnated by a perpetual odour of lavender.

When at last, in the month of March, little Afra, the fair-haired niece
of the portress, brought her the first snowdrop, and Kuni saw a pair of
starlings enter the box on the budding linden before her window, she
could no longer bear her imprisonment in the convent.

Within these walls she must fade, perhaps die and return to dust. In
spite of all the warnings, representations, entreaties, and promises of