She felt a certain power of renunciation come into her, and a strength to do what right and duty demanded. She rose from her knees, and bent over the bed, and for a moment laid her cheek against the cool white pillow. Oh, might God be very good to him, she prayed! Might He make up to him for all the pain and grief and woe that she had caused him; and some time in heaven might he come to know how wholly and completely she had loved him! She felt a sense of inward calm and strength as she turned from the bed, crossed the room, and entered her own apartment, closing and locking the door behind her. This peace was on her still as she presently went to bed, and fell almost immediately into a dreamless sleep. XV SONIA was awakened early by sounds in the room next her own, and as she opened her eyes with perfect recollection of all that had passed the night before, she wondered if it could possibly be that Harold had returned. It might be only the maid opening and airing the room; but whatever it was, she could not sleep again, and she began to devise a plan for getting away early, so that she might avoid the possibility of meeting Harold. She got out of bed, parted the curtains, and opened the casement of the low French window. The early sunshine had washed everything with its faint golden glow, and the little new-born leaves that covered the trees in the _place_ with a foliage of feathery green, paler than ever in its transparence against the sun, made a delicate filmy screen, through which she looked down on an exquisite moving picture. The doors of the beautiful, great Madeleine were open wide, and through them was pouring a long white rivulet that seemed to have its source in the little covered doorway in the side of the basement of the great building, and flowed thence in an even stream around the corner, and up the great steps of the building, passing between its central pillars, and so into the interior of the church. This stream was composed of what seemed an unending number of little girls dressed for their first communion. They were all in spotless white, with thin, transparent veils reaching to the hems of their gowns, white wreaths upon their heads, white stockings, shoes, and gloves, and each of them carried a tall white taper, to be presently lighted in the church. Stationed like sentinels along the line were gray-clad, white-bonneted sisters of charity, who directed the children’s movements as they walked with an awed stateliness out of the little door, up to the corner and around it, and then through the gate and up the steps, and were lost to sight beyond the wide church-door.