would separate us without pity if there is any worldly passion in
your face, or if you allow the tears to fall from your eyes."

The General bowed his head to regain self-control; when he looked
up again he saw her face beyond the grating--the thin, white, but
still impassioned face of the nun. All the magic charm of youth
that once bloomed there, all the fair contrast of velvet
whiteness and the colour of the Bengal rose, had given place to a
burning glow, as of a porcelain jar with a faint light shining
through it. The wonderful hair in which she took such pride had
been shaven; there was a bandage round her forehead and about her
face. An ascetic life had left dark traces about the eyes, which
still sometimes shot out fevered glances; their ordinary calm
expression was but a veil. In a few words, she was but the ghost
of her former self.

"Ah! you that have come to be my life, you must come out of this
tomb! You were mine; you had no right to give yourself, even to
God. Did you not promise me to give up all at the least command
from me? You may perhaps think me worthy of that promise now
when you hear what I have done for you. I have sought you all
through the world. You have been in my thoughts at every moment
for five years; my life has been given to you. My friends, very
powerful friends, as you know, have helped with all their might
to search every convent in France, Italy, Spain, Sicily, and
America. Love burned more brightly for every vain search. Again
and again I made long journeys with a false hope; I have wasted
my life and the heaviest throbbings of my heart in vain under
many a dark convent wall. I am not speaking of a faithfulness
that knows no bounds, for what is it?--nothing compared with the