If she had indeed felt some secret need to recover herself by reciting the heroisms of local history, she seemed to have succeeded. Her face kindled with emotion; and as he watched it he forgot even her creed in this revelation of her nature, which touched in him also something serious and exalted. But as she ceased he asked, with peculiar interest-- "Are there any Kentuckians among the Trappist Fathers?" "No," she replied, after a momentary silence, and in a voice lowered to great sadness. "There was one a few years ago. His death was a great blow to the Fathers. They had hoped that he might some day become the head of the order in Kentucky. He was called Father Palemon." For another moment nothing was said. They were standing side by side, looking towards that quarter of the horizon which she had pointed out as the site of the abbey. Then he spoke meditatively, as though his mind had gone back unawares to some idea that was very dear to him-- "No, this does not seem much like Kentucky; but, after all, every landscape is essentially the same to me if there are homes on it. Poor as this country is, still it is history; it is human life. Here are the eternal ties and relations. Here are the eternal needs and duties; everything that keeps the world young and the heart at peace. Here is the unchanging expression of our common destiny, as creatures who must share all things, and bear all things, and be bound together in life and death." "Sister!" called up the nun waiting below, "is not the wind blowing? Will you not take cold?" "The wind is not blowing, Sister, but I am coming." They turned their faces outward upon the landscape once more. Across it wound the little footpath towards the farm-house in the distance. By a common impulse their eyes rested upon the place of their first meeting. He pointed to it. "I shall never forget that spot," he said impulsively. "Nor I!" Her words were not spoken. They were not uttered within. As unexpectedly and silently as in the remotest profound of the heavens at midnight some palest little star is loosened from its orbit, shoots a brief span, and disappears, this confession of hers traced its course across the depths of her secret consciousness; but, having made it to herself, she kept her eyes veiled, and did not look at him again that day. "I think you have now seen everything that could be of any interest," the aged Sister said doubtfully, when they stood in the yard below. "The place is very interesting to me," he answered, looking around that he might discover some way of prolonging his visit. "The graveyard, Sister. We might go there." The barely audible words were Sister Dolorosa's. The scene of the temptation was to be transferred for the third time.