But she was not to reach the end of the wonderful song that day.
'And His mercy is on them that fear Him, from generation to generation,' the nuns sang.
With a crash, as if a thunderbolt had fallen at their feet in the choir, the Great Unforeseen once more flashed from its hiding-place and hurled itself into their midst.
The chapel rocked to and fro twice with a horrible noise of loosened masonry grinding on itself, and the panes of the high windows fell in three separate showers and were smashed to thousands of splinters on the stone floor, the lights went out, the sacred ornaments on the altar toppled and fell upon each other, the twilight that glimmered through the broken windows alone overcame the darkness in the wrecked church. The destruction was sudden, violent, and quick. In less than fifteen seconds after the shock, perfect stillness reigned again.
The Sisters, in their first terror, caught at each other instinctively, or grasped the woodwork with convulsed hands. 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.
'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. Singularly enough, not one of those on the other side was injured.
All had felt the certainty that a dynamite bomb had been exploded somewhere in the building with the intention of blowing up the hospital. As they fell out of their ranks and scattered in twos and threes, hastening to the different parts of the establishment where each did her accustomed work, Sister Giovanna naturally found herself beside the Mother Superior. As one of the supervising nurses, she was, of course, needed in the hospital itself with her superior.