One or two novices had screamed outright, but the most of them uttered an ejaculatory prayer, more than half unconscious.

The Mother Superior was standing upright and motionless in her place.
'Is any one hurt ?' she asked steadily, and looking round the semicircle in the gloom.
No answer came to her question.
'If any one of you was struck by anything,' she said again, 'let her speak.' No one had been hurt, for the small choir was under the apse of the chapel and there were no windows there.
'Let us go to the hospital at once,' she said.

'The patients will need us.' Her calm imposed itself upon the young novices and one or two of the more nervous Sisters; the others were brave women and had only been badly startled and shaken, for which no one could blame them.

They filed out, two and two, by the side door of the choir, Mother Veronica coming last.

From the cloister they could see that the big glass door of the reception-hall was smashed, and that the windows overhead on that side were also broken.