He spent half an hour on each orphan, and the last one, he said, would have to come again. “I’ll be bringing her along.” He entered the appointment in a little book. “I’ve no secretary, you see, Sister--can’t afford one yet!” and then he shook hands with her. “Good-bye.” The feel of his hand was just what she’d imagined it’d be, gentle, and yet strong. There were funny little dark hairs all down the back of it and along the wrist. And although it was such a hot day, the palm of him was cool and dry. Sister Dominic spoke to her, humbly, on the way home. “Well, you’re a wonderful woman of the world, Sister Clara dear, getting us all safe there and back and talking to the man just as though it was the gardener at dear old Noisy-le-Grand. It won’t be so hard, next time, if Reverend Mother sends us again.” Reverend Mother did send them again, with relays of orphans, and then Sister Clara alone, with old Mother Seraphina who spoke no English and whose cheap _râtelier_ appeared to need endless adjustments. And he was always kind, and he always smiled, with that screwing-up of his eyes, and talked to Sister Clara. One day she said that she had toothache, and received Reverend Mother’s leave to make an appointment for herself after Mother Seraphina’s session. She had, for days, been devoured by an intense curiosity to know what it would feel like to have those hands hovering about one’s face. Once, he had had to put his arm right round the back of Mother Seraphina’s old head.... “No, it’s not hurting me at all, at all.” She smiled up at him; a smile that she felt to be beatific, half-hypnotised. “Would you like to see what I’ve been doing?” “I would.” “There--on the left--that big molar----” He put a little mirror into her hands. And she that hadn’t looked in a glass, hardly, since the day of her final vows, twelve years ago! Gracious, what a colour she had! Plum-colour, that was her face. And the smile that had felt beatific, looking foolish and uncertain, as though she were ashamed of something. The glass turned dim as her heavy breathing struck it. Would she perhaps have been breathing into his face that way all the time, and she never thinking of such a thing? The face in the glass looked redder than ever. Mother of Mercy, this weather! The heat of it! And the holy habit no less than five smelly thicknesses of serge, and not wearing thin yet, though on the back of her year in and year out. “That’s the last stopping, Sister. I shan’t have to trouble you again.” “Amn’t I to come to you any more then?” “It won’t be necessary. What I’ve done should last you for a long while. But if you have pain, come to me at once. Any time.” What’d it be like, at all, not seeing him any more? Could it be that she’d become inordinately attached, the way the Imitation said was so wrong? And to a man, too. She was a wicked creature, not worthy of the holy vocation. “Is there nothing more needs doing?”