Beryl raised her eyebrows significantly. The sister in charge was clapping her hands as a signal for the girls to say their evening prayers. But there were no prayers on the lips of one girl on her knees. Would it ever be quiet? Would the tossing of the girls never cease as they twisted on their narrow beds? It seemed years to Beryl, lying motionless in hers, longing for the dead middle of the night to bring quiet breathing to the hundred sleepers round her. A wakeful devil seemed to be making his rounds among them; girl after girl turned, tossed, and coughed; not till long after midnight was the hush settled and complete, and not till then did Beryl Corselas, whose blood was thumping with suspense and determination, stir on her hard bed. Absolutely without sound she sat upright and looked about her. Her business would have been more easily done in the dark, but in every alcove there floated a wick in an inch of oil buoyed up in a jar full of water. In the glimmering, unearthly light the white sheets separating the alcoves seemed to stir, but she was used to that; and to have put out the dull light would have waked the heavy sleeper in the next bed. Barefooted, Beryl slipped to the cold floor, dressed, put her stolen money in her pocket, and, shoes in hand, crept through the wide corridor between the double row of alcoves. Even the sister in charge heard no sounds as the light step passed, and not a soul stirred in the convent as the girl stole down the wide, polished stairs in her stocking feet. In the lower flat it was dark; she was forced to keep one hand stretched out at arm’s length before her as she crept inch by inch through the silent house. The schoolroom door creaked as she opened it, but once inside floods of moonlight made her way clear. She looked round the room, where she had sat a hungry prisoner from afternoon school till bedtime, and in her fierce exultation at leaving it forgot she was still hungry. The window-fastening gave under her strong fingers, the sash moved easily, without noise, and, as quietly as the cat she had watched that evening, the girl dropped in the frozen grass outside. Skirting the wall she moved quickly to the very spot where the cat had crossed it, from a kind of superstition that she must climb over at no other place; and there mounted it with an effortless spring just as the other wandering thing had done. With a laugh she slipped to the ground and put on the shoes she carried. For the cat had been a good pilot. She stood on a road that she knew led to London, and she stretched out her arms in a kind of rapture. She was free from Mother Felicitas at last! But a waving shadow that came suddenly before her eyes killed her hasty joy. It was only the shadow of a bare, crooked tree, but its outline was like an arm outstretched to catch her. “Beryl, you fool!” she thought. “By morning you will be caught again unless there are miles between you and the convent.”