When the Major rejoined the Colonel, he found him walking up and down the room in a state of great agitation. "Well?" "Arrest me! I have let the prisoner go!" The Colonel hastened towards him, and embraced him nervously. "There! Volodia has his New Year's gift! Let us hope that now he will let me sleep in peace." "But ought not a report to be made?" "Why?" "And the papers dealing with the prisoner's case?" "The papers? There are their ashes in the stove. I have burnt them. Poor wretch! He will have to hurry--he will have to hurry to find his family." [Illustration] _A MISUNDERSTANDING_ [Illustration: "From all directions nuns came gliding towards the lighted portal."] [Illustration] A MISUNDERSTANDING I Vespers were drawing to a close. A young nun, Sister Helene, who had just finished her novitiate and taken the veil, stood in a dark recess, viewed from whence, the old church, with its round columns, seemed to fade away into the mysterious darkness under the cupola. She watched the black outlines of the "Sisters in Jesus" kneeling in the middle of the nave, the gilded "iconostasis" or church-screen with its blackened pictures set in frames sparkling with precious stones, its wax-tapers and lamps burning softly in the heavy incense-laden air. Each time that the deacon passed, waving his censer, they seemed to burn more brightly. But Sister Helene was lost in contemplation of a painting which had just been finished by the nun who shared her cell. The figure of the Holy Virgin seemed to stand out from the dark background; her large eyes were sadly fixed on the heads bent in devotion; the flickering flame seemed to cast light and shadow alternately on the divine features. It seemed sometimes to Helene that the sorrowful eyes of the Mother of God glowed with a misty light. Helene was not praying. Rapt in a self-forgetful reverie, her soul soared higher than the arches of the church; she had not heard the broken voice of the old priest, which sounded like a sob, any more than she heard the beatings of her own heart; she took no account of the flight of time till she felt a hand touch her arm. "Are you going to stay there till morning?" a little misshapen old woman asked her with a discontented air. "It is a real sin in you younger ones to stay so, absent-minded, without even making the sign of the cross. See! the wax-tapers have burnt out. You have been thinking long enough in your self-conceit, 'Here I am alone, and all the others have gone.'" "Pardon, Sister Seraphine," murmured the nun. "Very well! God will pardon you. Go now, I am closing the church. But make the sign of the cross; that will not break your arm, and then an obeisance. God be with you. All the same, it is a sin in you young ones. Ah, if they would only give us another abbess." Helene turned once more to look at the church-screen.