But the little white volcano seemed quietly cross, and held her small head very high as she led the Princess from one ward to another to the beautifully fitted operating-room; and when she spoke her tone was strangely cold and mordant, as a woman's voice sometimes sounds in the Alps, when she speaks across an ice-fall or a frozen lake.
The Princess looked behind her repeatedly, and her eyes sought her niece's face amongst those she saw, but she asked no questions about her, and apparently gave all her attention to what was shown her.
Sister Giovanna was in her cell during all that time, and should no doubt have been occupied; but instead, she was standing idly at her window, looking through one of the diamond-shaped openings in the lattice, in the direction of Monteverde.

She was hardly aware of what she saw, however, for in imagination she was following her aunt through the halls and wards and long corridors, and a struggle was going on in her heart which hurt her and made her despise herself.
The woman who had ruined her life was under the same roof with her again, and she could not forgive her; and that seemed a very great sin.

What had she gained in the five years that had gone by since the beginning of her noviciate, if she could not even forgive an injury?
That was the question.

Since her life had led her to nothing better than smouldering resentment and sharp regret, it had not been the holy life she had meant it to be--the failure she must score against herself was a total one, a general defeat--and all that she had believed she had been doing for the dead man's sake must count for nothing, since she had not once been really in a state of grace.
No doubt her self-accusation went too far, as a confessor would have told her, or even the Mother Superior, if that good and impulsive woman had known what was in her mind.

But Sister Giovanna did not believe she could go far enough in finding fault with herself for such great sins as her regret for a married life that might have been, and her lasting anger against a person who had robbed her; and it was while she was standing at her latticed window that morning that she first thought of making an even more complete sacrifice by joining the Sisters who intended to go out to the Rangoon leper hospital in the spring.
It was not with the hope of dying young that she wished to go and face death daily, but in the earnest desire to escape from what she called her temptation, and to regain that peace of mind which had been hers for a long time and now was gone.