Tales of the Cloister
will do it well, my dear," she said, almost lightly. "We cannot have you fail at this of all times. You will do justice to yourself and to us." She hesitated a little. "I will be near you," she added, simply.
The repetition of the familiar assurance that had run like a golden thread throughout the years silenced them both. By a common impulse they turned unseeing eyes upon the smiling garden below, while memories rose before them.
"I will be near you," Sister Estelle had said to the frightened little girl when darkness fell on the first night in the convent walls. "I will be near you," she had repeated at the crisis of the long illness several years later. Elizabeth recalled now those nights of delirium in which the silent, black-robed figure had remained at her bedside to do battle, the child thought, with the phantoms and goblins that filled the room. The gentle Sister had indeed been with her in all the marked episodes of her school-girl life; she was with her now in this last scene. They turned and read the same thought in each other's eyes. The nun took her pupil in her arms and held her there.
"No, dear child, it is not for the last time," she said, with quiet confidence. "I have been with you until now—I shall be with you in
182
