Perhaps they did not
judge wisely of the amount of self-sacrifice involved, for they judged
from hearts to which love was the whole of earth and heaven; but
nevertheless they pitied the Gray Nuns amidst the unhomelike comfort of
their convent, the unnatural care of those alien little ones. Poor
'Soeurs Grises' in their narrow cells; at the bedside of sickness and age
and sorrow; kneeling with clasped hands and yearning eyes before the
bloody spectacle of the cross!--the power of your Church is shown far
more subtly and mightily in such as you, than in her grandest fanes or
the sight of her most august ceremonies, with praying priests, swinging
censers, tapers and pictures and images, under a gloomy heaven of
cathedral arches. There, indeed, the faithful have given their substance;
but here the nun has given up the most precious part of her woman's
nature, and all the tenderness that clings about the thought of wife and
mother.
"There are some things that always greatly afflict me in the idea of a
new country," said Basil, as they loitered slowly through the grounds of
the convent toward the gate. "Of course, it's absurd to think of men as
other than men, as having changed their natures with their skies; but a
new land always does seem at first thoughts like a new chance afforded
the race for goodness and happiness, for health and life.
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