"It's you, dear Beatrix," said the sister in a voice for the dulcet tones of which there is no word in any language known to man. "I don't need to see you to know who you are, for I hear your prayers now as I heard them then. I've been waiting for you for a long time, but, as I was sure you would return, I took your place the day you left me, so that no-one would know that you'd gone. You know now what they are, the pleasures and happiness whose picture so seduced you, and you will not go away again. You're here, between ourselves, for the duration and for all eternity. Come back with confidence to the position that you occupied among my daughters. You will find in your cell, the way to which you have not forgotten, the habit that you left there, and you will put on with it your primordial innocence, of which it is the emblem. I owed to your love a grace that was out of the ordinary and which I have obtained for your repentance. Farewell, sister custodian of Mary! Love Mary as she has loved you!" It was indeed Mary, and when Beatrix, distraught, raised towards her eyes flooded with tears, when she stretched out to her her trembling arms making to her an act of thanksgiving broken by her sobs, she saw the Holy Virgin go up the steps of the altar, re-open the door to the tabernacle, and sit down again there in her heavenly glory under her golden halo and under her festoons of thorn flowers. Beatrix did not go back down to the choir without emotion. She went back to see her companions whose faith she had betrayed, and who had aged, immune to reproach, in the practice of an austere duty. She slid among her sisters lowering her head, and ready to humble herself at the first shout to announce her fault. Her heart greatly troubled, she lent an attentive ear to their voices, and she heard nothing. As none of them had noticed her departure, none of them paid any heed to her return. She threw herself at the feet of the Holy Virgin, who had never looked so beautiful to her, and who seemed to be smiling. In the dreams of her illusory life, she had grasped nothing that came anywhere near such happiness.