The smile of our nun was rapturous. She was proving its source. Once
more we saw the young countess who had given herself to her God. An
hour later, when we had reached the hospital wards, her novice's robes
were trailing the ground. She was on her knees in the very middle of
the great bare room. She was repeating the office of the hour, aloud,
with clasped hands and uplifted head. On her lovely young face there
was the glow of a divine ecstasy. All the white faces from the long
rows of the white beds were bending toward her; to one even in all
fulness of strength and health that girlish figure, praying beside the
great vase of the snowy daisies, with the glow that irradiated the
sweet, pure face, might easily enough have seemed an angel's.

As companions for our tour of the grounds we had two young Englishmen.
Both eyed the nuns in the distance of the corridors and the gardens
with the sharpened glances all men level at the women who have
renounced them. It is a mystery no man ever satisfactorily fathoms.

"Queer notion, this, a lot of women shutting themselves up," remarked
the younger of the two. "In England, now, they'd all go in for being
old maids, drinking tea and coddling cats, you know."

"I wonder which are the happier, your countrywomen or these Sisters,
who, in renouncing the world devote their lives to serving it. See,
over yonder" and I nodded to a scene beneath the wide avenue of the
limes. Two tall Augustines were supporting a crippled old man; they
were showing him some fresh garden-beds. Beyond was a gayer group. Some
of the lay sisters were tugging at a huge basket of clothes, fresh from
the laundry. Running across the grass, with flying draperies, two nuns,
laughing as they ran, each striving to outfoot the other, were
hastening to their rescue.