Through the dim corridors, the silent halls Of Yesterday, the nuns move, whispering Their rosary. Without, a robin calls A drowsy blessing to his little mate, For it is late, And chapel aisles are filled with peace and prayer. And Christ is there. Ah, dreams that haunt these keys of ivory--! _Et verbum caro factum est_, they sing, And lo! the years are as a day to me. I kneel among the quiet ones again To lay the pain, The joy of life, where light and shadow meet At Jesus' feet. Some time earlier, during the period when girl-emotions translate themselves into verse as naturally as bird-emotions translate themselves into song, Joan had composed these lines, with the odd prescience that frequently came to her when she "took her pen in hand." She had stepped aside from a heated game of handball one day to jot them down; and her play-fellows, evincing no particular surprise, had murmured to each other, "Leave Joan alone. She's writing Poetry." For poetry is as much a part of convent school-life as is handball. Now she was back among "the quiet ones" again, fulfilling her own prophecy, come to lay her burden of pain and joy, if not at Jesus' feet, at least in the safekeeping of his handmaidens. In her plain black frock, such as convent girls wear, with her hair down in a braid and a small apron tied about her waist, to protect her skirt from embroidery-floss, the nuns found it hard to believe it was Joan Blair who had come back to them out of the world, and not Joan Darcy. Only this was a Joan who played harder than her younger self had ever played, entering into the gaiety of the school, the basket-ball, the charades, the skating-matches, the fancy-dress impromptus, with a feverish eagerness which saddened the good ladies to see. Strange, vivid, restless young creature--what she had learned of life in the short while she had been away from them! Love, motherhood, and loss--the loss that is saddest of all losses to women, be they wives or maids or _religieuses_. While they in their silent corridors and hidden gardens had listened to month after quiet month rung away by the bells, praying, dreaming, working; tending the young life about them into blossom, sometimes carrying with candles one of their number back to a still place beyond the children's playground, sometimes--not often now--receiving into their ranks one who had done with the world's ways even before she came to know them. Truly "the quiet ones," blessed with the peace of those who resign their wills to the will of God.