Alex went home that day in ecstasy. The whole force of her nature was once more directed into one channel, and she was happy.
One day she told Mother Gertrude, with the complete luxury of unreserve always characteristic of her reckless attachments, the story of her brief engagement to Noel Cardew.
The nun looked strangely at her. "So you had the courage to go against the wishes of your family and break it all off, little Alex?"
It seemed wonderful to Alex that the action which had been so condemned, and which she had long ceased to regard as anything but folly, should be praised as courageous.
"I wasn't happy," she faltered. "I used always to think that love, which one read about, made everything perfect when it came--but from the first moment of our engagement I knew it was all wrong somehow."
"So you knew that?" the Superior said, smilingly. "You have been given very great gifts."
"It is not every one who would have had the courage to withdraw before it was too late."
"You mean, it would have been much worse if I'd actually married him?"
"Much, much worse. A finite human love will never satisfy that restless heart of yours, Alex. Tell me, have you ever found full satisfaction in the love of any creature yet? Hasn't there always been something lacking--something to grieve and disappoint you?"
Alex looked back. She thought of the stormy loves of her childhood; of Queenie, on whom she had lavished such a passion of devotion; of her vain, thwarted longing to bestow all where the merest modicum would have sufficed; lastly, she thought of Noel Cardew.
"Noel did not want all that I could have given him," she faltered. "He never knew the reallest part of me at all."
"And yet he loved you, Alex--he wanted you for his wife. But the closest of human intercourse, the warmest and dearest of human sympathy, will never be enough for a temperament like yours." She spoke with such authority in her voice that Alex was almost frightened.
"Shall I always be lonely, then?" she asked, feeling that whatever the answer she must accept it unquestioningly for truth.
"Until you have learnt the lesson which I think is before you," said the nun slowly.
"I am not lonely now that I have you," Alex asserted, clinging passionately to her hand.