“Well, my dear,” said the Warden, “I confess that I am amazed—astounded.” Again he adjusted his glasses, and looked at her.

She found herself moving slowly around the study, with the gait of a mannequin in a dress-maker’s show-room. She tried to stop this; but her body seemed to be quite beyond control of her mind. It had the insolence to go ambling on its own account. “Little space you’ll have in a convent cell,” snarled her mind vindictively. Her body paid no heed whatever.

Her grandfather, leaning back in his chair, gazed at the ceiling, and meditatively tapped the finger-tips of one hand against those of the other. “Sister Zuleika,” he presently said to the ceiling.

“Well? and what is there so—so ridiculous in”—but the rest was lost in trill after trill of laughter; and these were then lost in sobs.

The Warden had risen from his chair. “My dear,” he said, “I wasn’t laughing. I was only—trying to imagine. If you really want to retire from—”

“But I don’t,” she wailed.

“Of course, you don’t, my dear.”

“Come, you are tired, my poor child. That is very natural after this wonderful, this historic day. Come dry your eyes. There, that’s better. To-morrow—”