This was a capital idea, and I began immediately to work upon it. I managed the story very deftly; at least that was my opinion. My two principal characters made their appearance in Sicily, and at first were so intermingled with scenery and incidents as not to be very prominent; then they came more to the front, and other characters introduced themselves upon occasion. As these personages appeared and reappeared, I hoped that they would gradually surround themselves with an interest which would steadily increase the desire to know more and more about them. Thus, as I went on, I said less and less about Sicily, and more and more about my characters, especially the young man and the young woman, the curious blending of whose lives I was endeavoring to depict. This went on very smoothly for a few days, and then, about eleven o'clock one morning, my nun suddenly leaned back in her chair and laid down her pen. "I cannot write any more of this," she said, looking out of the window. I was so astonished that I could scarcely ask her what she meant. "This is love-making," she continued, "and with love-making the sisters of the House of Martha can have nothing to do. It is one of our principal rules that we must not think about it, read about it, or talk about it; and of course it would have been forbidden to write about it, if such a contingency had ever been thought of. Therefore I cannot do any more work of that kind." In vain I expostulated; in vain I told her that this was the most important part of my book; in vain I declaimed about the absurdity of such a regulation; in vain I protested; in vain I reasoned. She shook her head, and said there was no use talking about it; she knew the rules, and should obey them. I had been standing near the grating, but now I threw myself into a chair, and sat silent, wondering what I should do. Must I give up this most admirable plan of carrying on my work, simply because those foolish sisters had made absurd rules for themselves? Must I wind up my book for want of material? Not for a moment did I think of getting another secretary, or of selecting some other sort of that stuff which literary people call padding, for the purpose of prolonging my pleasant labors. I was becoming interested in the love-story I had begun, and I wanted to go on with it, and I believed also that it would be of great advantage to my book; but, on the other hand, it was plain that my nun would not write this story, and it was quite as plain to me that I could not insist upon anything which would cause her to leave me. "Don't you think," she said presently, still looking towards the window, "that we had better do some sort of work for the rest of the morning? It is not right for me to sit here idle. Suppose you try to supply some of the words which were left out of the manuscript, in the first days of my writing for you."