refectory, the stupid little girls to teach sewing, and the
insatiable lamps that were so greedy for oil. And always the
tender, boyish brown eyes, that looked so sorrowfully at the
fragile, beautiful little sister, haunting, following, pleading.

Perchance, had Sister Josepha been in the world, the eyes would
have been an incident. But in this home of self-repression and
retrospection, it was a life-story. The eyes had gone their way,
doubtless forgetting the little sister they pitied; but the
little sister?

The days glided into weeks, the weeks into months. Thoughts of
escape had come to Sister Josepha, to flee into the world, to
merge in the great city where recognition was impossible, and,
working her way like the rest of humanity, perchance encounter
the eyes again.

It was all planned and ready. She would wait until some morning
when the little band of black-robed sisters wended their way to
mass at the Cathedral. When it was time to file out the
side-door into the courtway, she would linger at prayers, then
slip out another door, and unseen glide up Chartres Street to
Canal, and once there, mingle in the throng that filled the wide
thoroughfare. Beyond this first plan she could think no further.

Penniless, garbed, and shaven though she would be, other
difficulties never presented themselves to her. She would rely
on the mercies of the world to help her escape from this
torturing life of inertia. It seemed easy now that the first
step of decision had been taken.