After the Mother Superior had ceased speaking the silence lasted only a few seconds, but it seemed long to her now that she had told her secret and was waiting to be answered.

Would her daughter forgive her?
The young nun's face expressed nothing she felt at that moment; for the staring eyes and parted lips remained mechanically fixed in a look of blind surprise long after her thoughts were on the wing; and her thoughts flew far, but their wide-circling flight brought them back, like swallows, as swiftly as they had flown away.
Then her heart spoke, and in another moment she was at her mother's knee, like a child, with a little natural cry that had never passed her lips before.

For a breathing-space both guessed what heaven might hold of rest, refreshment, and peace, and the march of tragic fate was stayed while mother and daughter communed together, and dreamed of never parting on earth but to meet in heaven, of keeping their sweet secret from all the world as something sacred for themselves, of working side by side, in one life, one love, one faith, one hope, of facing all earthly trouble together, and of fighting every battle of the spirit hand in hand.
Two could bear what one could not.

Sister Giovanna felt that fresh strength was given her, and the long-tried elder woman was conscious that her will to do good was renewed and doubled and trebled, so that it could accomplish twice and three times as much as before.

Her daughter would not leave her now, to be a martyr in the East, as the only escape from herself and from the man who loved her too daringly.
Why should she go?
If she still felt that she must leave Rome for a time, she could go to one of the order's houses far away, but not to the East, the deadly East! Heaven did not love useless suffering; the Church condemned all self-sacrifice that was not meet, right, and reasonable.