' I knelt in front of the Prioress, and she put a white
cap on my head, and pinned a black veil over it; and when she had
done this she drew me to her and kissed me, saying, 'Now you look
like my own child, with all your worldly vanities hidden away. I
believe Monsignor Mostyn would hardly know his penitent in her new
dress.'
"I think I can see you smile as you read this, and I think I can hear
you thinking, 'Once an actress always an actress.' But there is not
sufficient truth in this criticism to justify it, and if such a
thought does cross your mind, I feel you will suppress it quickly in
justice to me, knowing, as you must know, that a badge gives courage
to the wearer, putting a conviction into the heart that one is not
alone, but a soldier in a great army walking in step towards a
definite end. This sounds somewhat grandiloquent, but it seems to me
somewhat like the truth. Trying to get into step is interesting and
instructive, and the novitiate, though hardly bearable at times, is
better than sitting in the lonely guest-room. Mother Hilda's
instruction in the novitiate seems childish, yet why is it more
childish than a hundred other things? Only because one is not
accustomed to look at life from the point of view of the convent.
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