She sat leaning against the table, her head resting on her
hand, thinking over the past--as she was for ever thinking of
the past now, poor child! How sad, how weary they had been,
those years in the convent--yes, she knew that she had found
them so--and yet how peaceful, how innocent, how sheltered!
Reading her past life in the new light that every day made its
shadows darker, she knew that those years were the only ones
of her childhood which she could look back upon, without the
sudden pang that would come with the memory of those others
which she had found so happy then, but which she knew now
were--what? Ah, something so different from what she had once
imagined! But as for those days at the convent, they came back
to her, softened by the kindly haze of time, with the
strangest sense of restfulness and security, utterly at
variance, one would say, with the restless longing with which
she looked out on the world of action--and yet not wholly
inconsistent with it perhaps, after all. Did she indeed know
when and where she would be happy?
Madge, meanwhile, stood and looked at her.
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