She walked across the gardens, through the great groves, and sat down. The grass was worn away about the roots of the trees and through the gnarled trunks she could see the keeper's cottage covered with reddened creeper. Perhaps it was the calm and seclusion that called her thoughts to the convent garden, and she reflected that if she had not accepted the nuns' invitation to tea, her life might have continued without deviation. She was impressed with the slightness of the thread on which our destiny hangs, and then by the inevitableness of our lives. We perceive the governing rule only when we look back. The present always seems chaos, but when we look back, we distinguish the reason of every action, and we recognise the perfect fulfilment of what must be. Her visit to the convent--how little it was when looked at from one side, when looked at from another how extraordinary! If she had known that Monsignor was going to ask her to go there, she would have invented a plausible excuse, but she had had no time to think; his kind eyes were fixed upon her, and he seemed so ready to believe all she said, that her courage sank within her, and she could not lie to him. Perhaps all this was by intention, by the very grace of God! The Virgin might have interceded on her behalf, for is it not said that whoever wears the scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel cannot lose his soul? But for the last two years, for more than two years, she has not worn her scapular. The strings had broken, and they had not been mended. She had intended to buy another, but had not been able to bring herself to do so, so hypocritical did it seem. It might be that these dreadful nights of insomnia had been sent so that she might have an opportunity of realising the wickedness of her life, and the risk she incurred of losing her immortal soul. She dare not have recourse to the sleeping draught, and must endure perhaps another sleepless night. If they had been sent, as she thought they were, for a purpose, she must not dare to hush, by artificial means, the sense God had awakened in her; to do so would be like flying in the face of Providence. She had never suffered from sleeplessness before, and could not think that this insomnia was accidental. No, she dare not have recourse to sleeping draughts, at least not till she had been to confession. If afterwards she did not get to sleep, it would be different. The fear arose in her of taking too much, of dying in her sleep. If she were to awake in hell! And that evening, when Merat reminded her of the draught, she said it was to be left on the table, and that she would take it if she required it.