five o'clock
I was to travel alone by the Paris express which left Rome at six o'clock that evening . The Mother of the Novices was to put me in a sleeping car and see that the greatest care would be taken of me until I arrived at Calais , where Father Donovan was to meet the train and take me home . I cried a great deal , I remember , but everybody in the Convent was kind , and when , of my own choice , I returned to the girls at recreation , the sinister sense of dignity which by some strange irony of fate comes to all children when the Angel of Death is hovering over them , came to me also -- poor , helpless innocent -- and I felt a certain distinction in my sorrow . At five o'clock the omnibus of the Convent had been brought round to the door , and I was seated in one corner of it , with the Mother of the Novices in front of me , when Mildred Bankes came running breathlessly downstairs to say that the Reverend Mother had given her permission to see me off . Half an hour later Mildred and I were sitting in a compartment of the Wagon-Lit , while the Mother was talking to the conductor on the platform . Mildred , whose eyes were wet , was saying something about herself which seems pitiful enough now in the light of what has happened since . She was to leave the Convent soon , and before I returned to it she would be gone .