The other looked at her again very keenly, and then, instead of answering, asked a question.
Angela had lately asked herself the same thing, but she replied with some diffidence:
'If I can do a little good, by working very hard all my life, I hope that it may be allowed to help the soul of a person who died suddenly.'
The Mother Superior's white face softened a little.
'That is a good intention,' she said. 'If it is sincere and lasting, you will be a good nun. You may begin your noviciate on Sunday if you have made up your mind.'
'Very well. I have only one piece of advice to give you, and perhaps I shall remind you of it often, for it was given to me very late, and I should have been the better for it. Try to remember what I tell you.'
'It is this. Count your failures but not your successes. You cannot surprise God by the amount of good you do. There are girls who enter upon the noviciate just as hard-working students go up for an examination, hoping to astonish their examiners by the amount they know. That is well enough at the university, but it is all wrong in religion. Work how you will, you cannot be perfect, and, if you were, you could only be what God made man before sin came. Each student is trying to beat all the others, and one succeeds. We are not trying to outdo each other; there are no marks in our examination and there is no competition. We are working together to save life in a world where millions die for want of care. To do less than the best we can is failure, for each of us, and the best we can all do together is very little compared with all there is to be done. Faith, Hope, and Charity are all we have to help us, all we can ask of Heaven. Believe, hope, and help others while you live, and all will go well hereafter, never fear! Not to help, not to believe, not to hope, even during one moment, is to fail in that moment. Where the sum is light, it is easy to count the dark places, but not the light itself. That is what I mean, my daughter, when I say, keep account of your failures but not of your successes. Try to remember it.'
She went back to her work, and the Mother Superior's words thereafter became the rule of her life; but she was not sent for again to listen to a lecture on vanity, and the small White Volcano was inclined to think that it had made a mistake in breaking out, and inwardly offered a conditional apology.