I want to know what `carnal' and `worldly' mean. They are words which I hear very often, and always with condemnation: but they seem to mean quite different things, in the lips of different speakers. When Mother Ada uses them, they mean having affection in one's heart for any thing, or any person, that is not part of holy Church. When Mother Gaillarde speaks them, they mean caring for any thing that she does not care for-- and that includes everything except power, and grandeur, and the Order of Saint Gilbert. And when Mother Alianora says them, they fall softly on the ear, as if they meant not love, nor happiness, nor any thing good and innocent, but simply all that could grieve our Lord and hurt a soul that loved Him. They are, with her, just the opposite of Jesus Christ. Oh, if only our blessed Lord had been on earth now, and I might have gone on pilgrimage to the place where He was! If I could have asked Him all the questions that perplex me, and laid at His feet all the sorrows that trouble me! For I do not think He would have commanded the saints to chase me away because I maybe have poorer wits than other women,--He who let the mothers bring the babes to Him: I fancy He would have been patient and gentle, even with me. I scarce think He would have treated sorrow--even wrong or mistaken sorrow, if only it were real--as some do, with cold looks, and hard words, and gibes that take so much bearing. I suppose He would have told me wherein I sinned, but I think He would have done it gently, so as not to hurt more than could be helped--not like some, who seem to think that nothing they say or do can possibly hurt any one. But it is no use saying such things to people. Once, I did say about a tenth part of what I felt, when Mother Ada was present, and she turned on me almost angrily. "Sister Annora, you are scarce better than an idiot! Know you not that confession to the priest is the same thing as to our Lord Himself?" Well, it may be so, though it never feels like it: but I am sure the priest is not the same thing. If I were a young mother with little babes, I could never bring them to any priest I have known save one, and that was a stranger who confessed us but for a week, some five years gone, when the Lord Prior was ill. He was quite different from the others: there was a soul behind his eyes--something human, not merely a sort of metallic box which sounded when you rang it with another bit of metal. I never know why Margaret's eyes make me think of that man, but I suppose it may be that there was the same sort of look in his. I am not sure that I can put it into words. It makes me think, not of a dry bough like my heart feels to be, but rather of a walled recluse-- something alive, very much alive, inside thick, hard, impenetrable walls which you cannot enter, and it can never leave, but itself soft and tender and sweet. And I fancy that people who look like that must have had histories.