"
Under the soothing hand, Randalin's sobs slowly ceased; when at last she
raised her wet eyes there was no longer rebellion in them but only youth's
measureless despair. "Sister, now as always, I want to do what you would have
me--but I am so full of grief! Must I go back to Avalcomb and begin all over
again? It seems to me that my life stretches before me no more alluringly than
yonder dusty road, that runs straight on, on, over vast spaces but always
empty."
The beauty that had been Sister Wynfreda's hovered now about her mouth as
fragrance around a dead rose. Her gaze was on a branch above them where a
little brown bird, calling plaintively, was slipping from her nest. Over the
wattled edge, two tiny brown heads were peeping like fuzzy beech-nut rinds. "I
wonder," she said, "what those little creatures up there will think when a few
months hence the blue sky becomes leaden, such that no one of them ever before
recollected it so dark, and the sun that is wont to creep to them through the
leaves has gone out like a candle before the winter winds? By reason of their
youth, I suppose they will judiciously conclude with themselves that there is
never going to be any blue sky again, that their lives will stretch before
them in a dark-hued stress of weather, empty of all save leafless trees and
frozen fields. My fledgeling, will they not be a little ashamed of their
short-sightedness when the spring has brought back the sun?"
The girl's lips parted before her quickening breath, and the old nun smiled at
her tenderly as she moved away with her hands full of the green symbols of
healing.
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