“Aurelie! Aurelie! Where are you? Aurelie!” “Gracious!” cried the girl in troubled accents. “Why are they calling me?” She ran to the end of the terrace and saw one of the nuns in the avenue of limes. “Here I am! What is it, sister?” “A telegram,” cried the sister. “A telegram? Don’t take the trouble to come up here, sister. I’ll come down to you.” A few minutes later when she came back to the topmost terrace with a telegram in her hand, she looked distracted. “It’s from my step-father,” she said. “Bregeac?” “Yes.” “He is summoning you back to Paris?” Ralph said gravely. “He will be here at any moment.” “What for?” “To take me away!” she gasped. “Impossible!” “Look!” He read the two lines of the telegram, which had been dispatched from Bordeaux. “Shall arrive four o’clock be ready to leave at once. Bregeac.” Ralph considered the message and asked: “Have you written to tell him that you are here?” “No: he must have come to the conclusion that I would come here.” “And what are you going to do?” he asked. “What can I do?” “Refuse to go with him.” “The Mother-superior would never consent to keep me.” “Then leave here at once,” Ralph suggested. “How?” He pointed to the door in the wall of the next terrace and waved towards the forest. “Go? Run away from the convent as though I were guilty?” she cried in protesting accents. “No. It would cause these poor women, who love me as a daughter too much sorrow. Never will I do that!” Feebly she sank down on a stone bench under the opposite parapet. Ralph crossed the terrace to her and said gravely: “I have made a bad mistake in letting myself be distracted from the task I have set myself of protecting you. I ought to have remained as distrustful as I was at the beginning and advised you, urged you rather, to go away from here. From the very first I was sure that it was necessary. But the pleasure of being here, of seeing you every day—no, no: don’t run away. I’m not going to say anything that will upset you; I’m not going to tell you how I feel towards you, or the reasons which make me treat you as I do. But all the same you must quite understand that I am devoted to you as a man is devoted to a woman whom—who is so much to him—and it is necessary that my devotion should give you absolute confidence in me and that you should be ready to obey me blindly. It is the one condition of safety for you. Do you understand?” “Yes,” she said, wholly dominated.