Of these children, when they had passed from the gates of Faïel for the last time, some went to pass all their years in the small secluded châteaux or the dull stone-built towns of the seashore or the interior; some, finding a wider flight, a bolder fate, went into the life of the world and lived that life. But wherever they went, whatever they became, none of them ever wholly forgot Faïel; all of them when they bore children said, as they looked on their little daughters, 'They shall go to the Dames de Ste. Anne;' so that generation after generation came to the great Gothic gateway, and passed within and dwelt there for eight or ten peaceful years; and the sisters, though death made changes amidst them, yet seemed always the same.
Yseulte, who was a fanciful child like most of those who have a lonely childhood, used to believe that they were like that woman of the time of Clovis who learned the secret of eternal life from listening to the singing of the forest birds.
She used to look through the grating down the deep green shade of the woods without, and think, 'That is why they live so long, why they are always content.'
One day an old peasant, who was called a witch in Faïel, saw her looking so and heard her say something of her thoughts to her companion, and the old crone shook her head wisely, 'Do not wish to live long; wish to live so that you have all heaven in one hour; it is not the birds, nor is it the woods, nor is it the saints, that will give you that.'
'In the village they say she has been a wicked woman,' said the girl who was beside her.
Yseulte pondered often on the mysterious words, but she could never understand them.
At Faïel her days and years went by without any sorrow, if without any pleasure save such as youth and perfect health and willingness to accomplish all allotted tasks can bring with them. She always wore grey or black or white; no colours were ever seen, no ornaments were ever allowed within the sacred walls. She was regarded as certain to enter the religious life. '_Tu seras des nôtres_,' said the nuns so often to her that before she was ten years old she had grown so imbued with the idea that she had never dreamed of resisting such a destination. Her life was so entirely simple, in a way so barren, that the spiritual world assumed a proportion in it which would have been morbid had not the high courage and bodily healthfulness of her resisted the gloom which those who had to do with her deemed most fitting to the loneliness of her lot. She came of a race of gay nobles, of reckless soldiers, of high-handed seigneurs, and some instincts of their courage, of their temper, of their imprudence, stirred in her now and then beneath the calm of cloistral habit and the spirituality of her natural temperament.