Sister Dolorosa and Posthumous Fame

e world towards the east; and the moon had quickly risen and hung about it the long silvery twilight of her heavenly watchfulness. The summer, too, which had been moving southward,

igh, as those zephyrs, toying with her warm hair, broke some earthly dream of too much tenderness. Or they may merely have cooled the feverish feet of a withered nun, who clasped her dry hands in ecstasy, as on her cavernous eyes there dawned

the elms blessed it with tireless arms, and from the zenith of the sky down to the horizon there rested on outstretched win

he Mother Superior. She had sinned against her vows. She had impiously offended the Divine Mother. And to-day, after answering his letter in order that she might defend her religion, she had acknowledge

se of alienation from human sympathy. She felt that she stood henceforth estranged from the entire convent-Mot

or, stepped out into the night. For a moment she paused, icy and faint with physical fear; then, passing like a swift shadow across the silvered lawn, she went round to the side entrance of the church, unlocked the door, and, entering quickly, locked herself inside. There she stood for some time with hands pressed tightly to her fluttering heart, until bodily agitation died away before the recollection of her mission; and there came upon her that calmness with which the soul enacts great tragedies. Then slowly, very slowly, hi

r of a fatal passion. But it should be remembered how unbefriended that bosom had been by any outpost of feminine self-consciousness; how exposed it was through very belief in its unearthly consecration; how, like some unwatched vase that had long been collecting the sweet dews and rains of heaven, it had been silently filling with those unbidden intimations that are

the history of her thoughts and feelings. The moon outside, flooding the heavens with its beams, was not so intense a lamp as memory, now turned upon the recesses of her mind. Nothing escaped detection. His words, the scenes with him in the garden, in the field-his voice, looks, gestures-his anxiety and sympathy-his passionate letter-all were now viv

nt to our better selves; but of all tragedies enacted within the theatre of the human mind what one is so pitiable as that in which a pure being prays to b

se vanished in that hour; if any vernal belt of maidenhood, it felt the hot breath of that experience of the world and of the human destiny which quickly ages whatever it does not destroy. So that while she p

ounce it-had set upon it the seal of irrevocable truth. It is when the victim is led to the altar of sacrifice that it turns its piteous eyes upon the sacrificing hand and utters its poor dumb cry for life; an

the heavens, there looked down upon her from their serene, untroubled heights only the stars, that never falter or digress from their fore-written courses. The thought came to her that never henceforth should she look up to them without being reminded of how her own will

that mother's bosom was now a mound of dust. She looked across the lawn towards the convent where the Mother Superior and the nuns were sleeping. To-morrow she would stand among them a greater alien than any stranger. No; she was alone; among the millions of human beings on the earth of God there was not o

hich a paved walk led to the convent building. She reached the corner, she turned, and

low cry of surprise and joy he sprang up and followed along the side of the church; for she had begun to retrace her steps to the door, to lock herself inside. When he came up beside her, she pause

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ding love, all the depth o

she suddenly bowed her head as the wave of memories and emotions passed over her; th