The delay brought no consolation to my heart. It only prolonged my unhappiness. I did not love my doll after the honest fashion of a younger child. I did not really fear that I should miss her. But, what was infinitely worse, I could not bring myself to believe that Beata Benedicta was dead,--although I was going to allow her to be buried. The line of demarcation between things that can feel and things that cannot had always been a wavering line for me. Perhaps Hans Andersen's stories, in which rush-lights and darning needles have as much life as boys and girls, were responsible for my mental confusion. Perhaps I merely held on longer than most children to a universal instinct which they share with savages. Any familiar object, anything that I habitually handled, possessed some portion of my own vitality. It was never wholly inanimate. Beata's little bisque body, with its outstretched arms, seemed to protest mutely but piteously against abandonment. She had lain by my side for months, and now I was going to let her be buried alive, because I was ashamed to rescue her. There was no help for it. Rather than confess I was such a baby, I would have been buried myself. A light fall of snow covered the frozen earth when we dug Beata's grave with our penknives, and laid her mournfully away. The site selected was back of the "Seven Dolours" chapel (chapels are to convent grounds what arbours and summer-houses are to the profane), and we chose it because the friendly walls hid us from observation. We had brought out our black veils, and we put them on over our hats, in token of our heavy grief. Elizabeth read the burial service,--or as much of it as she deemed prudent, for we dared not linger too long,--and afterwards reassured us on the subject of Beata's baptismal innocence. That was the great point. She had died in her sinless infancy. We crime-laden souls should envy her happier fate. We put a little cross of twigs at the head of the grave, and promised to plant something there when the spring came. Then we took off our veils, and stuffed them in our pockets,--those deep, capacious pockets of many years ago. "Let's race to the avenue gate," said Tony. "I'm frozen stiff. Burying is cold work." "Or we might get one of the swings," said Lilly. But Marie--whose real name, I forgot to say, was Francesco--put her arm tenderly around me. "Don't grieve, Beatrice," she said. "Our little Beata has died in her baptismal"-- "Oh, come away!" I cried, unable to bear the repetition of this phrase. And I ran as fast as I could down the avenue. But I could not run fast enough to escape from the voice of Beata Benedicta, calling--calling to me from her grave. Reverend Mother's Feast