'I only know that I love him as dearly as ever,' said Sister Giovanna.
The churchman looked at her keenly for a moment, and she did not avoid his eyes.
'Would you break your vows for him?' he asked, with sudden directness.
The nun started as if he had struck her and half rose from her chair.
'Break my vows?' she cried, her eyes blazing with indignation.
But Monsignor Saracinesca only nodded and laid his thin hand flat on the table, towards her. She sank to her seat again.
'Then I know that, although you may love him more than any one in the world, you do not love him better than the work you have promised to do.'
He had used the very same expression a few moments earlier, but with a different tone; for him it had been an asseveration of good faith, but with her it was more like a prayer. She had resented his question as if it had been an insult, but when he showed how much he trusted her, she began to distrust herself. She would die the martyr's death rather than break her vows in deed, but she was too diffident of her own womanhood not to fear a fall from the dignity of heartfelt resignation to the inward ignominy of an earthly regret. Besides, 'the work she had promised to do' had been promised for his sake, not for its own; not for any gain to her soul, but in the earnest hope that it might profit his, by God's mercy. Since he was not dead, but alive, the chief purpose of it died with his return to life. She did not love the work she had promised to do more than she loved him; that was not true, and never had been. All had been for him--her vow, her work, and her prayers. Heaven forbid, indeed, that she should now set him before them; yet it was hard not to do so and there was only one possible way; in a changed sense they must be given for him still, and for his salvation, else she could not give at all.
Monsignor Saracinesca had watched her progress from her noviciate to her present position of responsibility, and had often spoken of her with the Mother Superior. He would not have advised every nun to do what he thought best in her case. There was not another in the community, except the Mother herself, whom he would have trusted so fully. But, being what she was, his honourable sense of justice to a man who had suffered much and must suffer more impelled him to act as he did. As he himself said, it was a matter of opinion and judgment, and his own approved the course. Those may blame him who think otherwise, but no one can find fault with Sister Giovanna for following his advice; she had a right to believe that it was the best, and as for herself, she had never hesitated. The mere suggestion that she should not see Giovanni at least once and alone looked to her outrageous and contrary to all sense, as perhaps it was.