She walked across the gardens, through the great groves, and sat down. The grass was worn away about the roots of the trees and through the gnarled trunks she could see the keeper’s cottage covered with reddened creeper. Perhaps it was the calm and seclusion that called her thoughts to the convent garden, and she reflected that if she had not accepted the nuns’ invitation to tea, her life might have continued without deviation. She was impressed with the slightness of the thread on which our destiny hangs, and then by the inevitableness of our lives. We perceive the governing rule only when we look back. The present always seems chaos, but when we look back, we distinguish the reason of every action, and we recognise the perfect fulfilment of what must be. Her visit to the convent—how litt
