She lay in her bed, an hour before Matins, awake and restless.

Somehow, over breakfast the day before, she'd been drawn into a conversation about first kisses.

It wasn't as though she had nothing to contribute, but she wasn't about to say so. Her concern was for smoothing the way for Jane among the girls, without betraying any of Jane's troubled past that she would rather not share. It was sufficient to remind Trixie - dear Trixie - that she was a nun, and wouldn't be part of a good old gossip.

She hadn't missed anything worth missing, she felt. Nothing could compare with knowing she was being stretched in every way to do the work of the Lord, and to see the results on earth.

She'd had a boyfriend or two, as a girl, and a few chaste kisses that had been thrilling at the time but had long faded into fond memory. Local lads from school; nice, bright boys with promising futures - the kind she might have looked to settle down with, if the Lord and a strictly policed Nursing course had not come calling. She might have gone onto University and met someone there, a man who wasn't put off by her intelligence. But only a handful of wealthy, terribly forward families from her town would ever send a girl to University. And people never treated them the same when they came home. Her two visits home since she took the veil had been so awkward, one set of cousins full of the kind of subtle resentments and pricks only family could deliver, and another set being silly and fawning over her.

Unlike Jane, she'd never had a problem with speaking with men, before or after she took vows. She tended to think of them all as potentially misbehaving little brothers, even older ones like Fred. In fact, being clothed in her habit allowed her to speak more freely with the men she associated with, without the question of attraction, or having to keep up with the exhausting threads of fashionable talk and new jokes. There was a frankness about it that she liked, even as they tended to be on their best behaviour around her. Sometimes she wanted to smile and tell them she didn't mind, really, if they smoked or joked or even let a rough word slip now and then. She might be terribly prim on the outside herself, but that was just her way - she'd not hold it against them.

What did that say, though? She was meant to remind them of the presence of God in the world, and to strive for higher things.

What did it mean, too, that Trixie had forgotten for a moment that she wasn't one of the girls? Did it show, somehow, that sometimes she longed to be? That as much as she loved her sisters, there were times that the rigors of spiritual detachment and avoiding personal friendships among them, left her feeling terribly lonely some nights? She may have been some years older than the nurses, but in a way she was younger, too. She'd entered the convent when she was a little younger than them, and her experience of a worldly social life had almost stopped.

Almost.

She rolled over in her narrow little bed, and grimaced as her long nightdress clung to her legs and the sheets. She was too hot and a little thirsty, but she didn't want to get up. If she could settle down she might still sleep a little longer before the knock came for Matins.

But after a few more minutes it became clear that sleep was futile. She tossed back her covers and stretched her arms and legs, wanting to wiggle them about in a most unrestrained manner, and stood up. Fresh linen, a drink of water and some quiet time in the coolth of the chapel; that would help. She dressed as silently as she could, without switching on her lamp, not wanting to wake Sister Monica Joan next door, and slipped out the door.

Closing it noiselessly behind her, she had a start when she saw a light under Sister Monica Joan's door. But there was no sound, not even of pages turning. Perhaps Sister had fallen asleep with her light on.

She moved down the long familiar corridors, feeling like an interloper, a stranger at best and a fraud at worst. What was she doing, creeping about like this, trying to avoid attention? But who was she to speak to, at this hour?

Again. Was this the third time this week? It was just too hot to sleep.

She pushed open the heavy, well-oiled chapel door and stepped inside. Should she light the candles? It wasn't her week on chapel duty, but she might as well do the candles and flowers while she was about. She moved from one tall pillar to the next, enjoying the crisp, heady scent of beeswax and the crackle of each match as she went. Plucked a few droopy chrysanthemums from the standing bouquets on the altar and hymnal stands, and dropped them in the bin.

She'd read about the silences of God. They all had. Nuns fell in love, too, of course. It would be silly to think they were immune. They were whole women, with completely formed emotions and minds. Eventually the passions passed by, transmuted into the companionship of the Order and a lifetime of service and faith that would be harder to extract than a lung. So even if she had fallen in love, it needn't be more than a passing trial. He did not, could not love her back in any case, so what was the point?

She looked up at St. Luke, frozen in glass. He remained silent.

Very well; she could wait. She was patient. And she could still pray the words, like practicing her scales, until the inspiration to sing came back again.

So much seemed perfectly clear, in the crystalline hour before dawn.

She wished she could stay here in this place of certainty. But her work would call her back to the world in a few moments.

Sister Benedict came in then, a little early to prepare for Matins. She looked around at the lit candles, and then back at her. The Great Silence was still upon them until after this first office of the day, so Sister Benedict merely smiled and bowed her thanks, and began placing hymnals on the chairs.

Her broken sleep came back to tell on her later in the day. The Summer Fete usually came and went like a clockwork operation, small entertainments and family activities, and rather too much cake and ice cream, bringing all the locals out, and earning an annual sum for the Leprosy Hospital. This year, they had to contend with Mrs. Clarke's ultra-modern ideas. She had decided to use the Sisters and the babies of Poplar as an advertising ploy for donations, and no remonstrance would stop her.

The idea irritated. Nonnatus did not need to be made the center of public attention, especially not in a way that pitted the already competitive mothers of Poplar against each other. The winners of the baby contest would be lording it over the rest for weeks, and for what? Bragging rights, and some small improvements to the clinic that might or might not materialize. There were plenty of other worthy charities in Poplar whose needs were greater.

"I think it's dreadful to waste your time like this," she told Dr. Turner. He'd found her in the Parish Hall, where she was sorting supplies for the afternoon clinic. Mrs. Clarke had hinted strongly that a wish-list for the clinic would carry more weight with the doctor's authority. She may have been correct, but the doctor had still, somewhat ironically, found her, the most junior nun of them all, to seek her advice.

She was sharper with him than he deserved, but it kept her voice controlled, and she was glad her hands had plenty of work to do. The smell of Henleys and Patrick was a pleasure so sweet it threatened to rise in her throat and choke her. In the light of the window she could see that he, too, had had late nights lately. The lines in his face were shadowed, and his eyes seemed tired.

"Just tell me what you want, Sister," he pressed.

If I knew that…

"We manage perfectly well, in spite of the clinic's limitations," she said shortly. She could hear her accent thickening as she spoke. "We take pride in it."

Which was not something she should be admitting, but it was the spirit of Poplar after all. Make do and mend. Find a way, somehow. Never admit defeat.

"If you can't tell me what you want," he temporized, "then tell me what you need."

She took a breath. None of this was his fault, and she must seem unaccountably shrewish. He was trying to help her. Help them all."Very well." She looked about her. "There are several screens in need of repair. And there's never enough hot water."

He pulled a face. "Isn't there?" They had apparently been too successful at keeping this lack from him, so that he would never stint himself.

"We have to boil the kettle for you to wash your hands," she admitted. "So a water heater would be nice, above the sink," she went on, with growing enthusiasm as he nodded agreement. If it was a possibility, there was no harm in asking. "And we struggle with these spirit lamps." She'd spent an hour yesterday carefully trimming gummy wicks, wiping sooty rims, and packing them in their crates in wadding. Surely there must be a better source of flame, or safer new designs? The open flames were so tempting to small fingers. "They're so old fashioned and so fragile."

He stubbed out his cigarette as he came over to see. She pulled out a lamp to show him.

"They must break so easily," he said, taking it from her.

"Yes, and the wicks get damp, and they won't burn," she replied. It was a daily frustration. But it sounded somehow inane to her ears, and her voice trailed off, as his nearness registered. His presence loomed over her and gathered her in.

His gentle hands turning the fragile glass brought the memory of his fingers stroking her cheek. For all her renewed focus lately, she was unprepared for her breath catching short. Or that she could not tear her eyes from his face.

His dear, beloved face.

Just for a heartbeat, and then she would look away.

He looked up then, and his eyes fixed directly on hers. Something seemed to give way, in her belly, like sitting in a swing and dropping from a height.

She felt caught like a moth, but he didn't smile, or drop his gaze. He held her steady, safe in their own world. This - this was no longer something she could call a private passing fancy, or a one-sided distraction.

Whatever it was, it was real, and he felt it, too.

They both saw it and they could not deny it.

He was about to speak. She wished he wouldn't, but she had to know -

"Dad!"

The moment was pierced as Timothy came clattering into the Hall, calling his father away to the surgery. She stepped back, and took a breath, and was relieved to chatter with the boy for a moment.

The two left, and she was alone. She leaned on the crates and took a moment to breathe.

What in the world just happened?

She carried the box of lamps out of the kitchen and into the hall, over to the tables that were waiting to be laid out with examination kits. Her face was hot and her breath not yet steady. What was she thinking?

But she wasn't thinking. The effect Patrick had on her was beyond that.

It couldn't be the same for him.

He'd always been kind to her, from the day they met. Like the little sister she was supposed to be. He'd come to hold her in high regard, as a colleague. Perhaps they'd have become friends, in the world. That didn't mean he loved her. A meaningful glance certainly didn't mean he was in love with her. How could he be? Not a prim nursing sister with the romantic experience of a sheltered girl. Could he even find her attractive?

And it shouldn't matter to her if he did.

She was already in a vulnerable place with her spiritual life. She should be taking greater pains to distance herself from him, ensure that their relationship was nothing but professional. Face the difficulty head-on, and tell him plainly that if he was entertaining any warm thoughts of her, he must recognize that he'd be better off seeking the companionship of someone suitable, someone who could return his feelings. Someone who might be a mother to Timothy. A worthy successor to Marianne. They deserved nothing less.

Oh, God, but I love Timothy too… the confession tumbled unbidden into her throat and swelled.

When she thought of the two of them, Patrick and young Timothy, she felt cracks in her heart that something soft and liquid and warm wanted to pour out of. She saw so clearly the shape of the thing they were missing dreadfully. She felt the edges of it, and felt how all that molten rushing stuff inside her could fit into it. It would be hard, harder than leaving the world to take the veil had been, but so natural. She could feel what it would be like to step into that shape, drawing it about her like a cloak, and knowing it would fit perfectly.

That wasn't lust. That wasn't temptation. That was motherhood and partnership. Holy matrimony was also a sacrament, she reminded herself.

But not for her. Never for her.

How could she leave the religious life?

It was the first time the thought had occurred to her as a real possibility. It stunned her, and she paused in her work for a moment as it washed over her.

No, she couldn't leave. Couldn't consider leaving.

She reminded herself that this was all quite normal. The Silences of God came and went. Who was she to demand that God fit his voice into her paltry human ears?

She fit perfectly within her habit, too. She'd felt a similar pull towards the shape of that identity, too. Found her calling and her true capability, within the Rule and her training. The slow, attentive curbing of a passionate young woman into a useful, respected servant of God and community, a much needed agent in the fight for the welfare of the mothers and babies she served.

All those years of hard work could not be easily passed over for a deepening attraction, even genuine love.

As a nurse and a scientist, she reminded herself it was just her age upon her, too. Surely this physical, raw feeling, this surging in her womb and her breast, that was just her body doing its job, trying with all its might to remind her she would soon be getting a little old to have a baby? Dr. Turner was a good man, an admirable man, with a motherless child. Of course it was only natural she'd respond to all that. To him. And look at her job! Knee deep in newborns and the warm, fleshy sights and sounds and smells and needs of pregnant mothers.

Just the tug of maternity at odds with her religious vows. They talked about it in the Novitiate, the years of testing, of doubt, of watching young mothers their own age going about with their children. In many ways, the life of a nun was unnatural. Lonely, relentless and childless. Even close friendships were strongly discouraged among the Sisters.

No wonder, then, that the shape of the thing she was grieving the loss of took the form of a widowed man and his small son. The fanciful romantic thoughts, and the frankly sensual longings that rose in her mind and flooded her dreams were normal and should not distract her.

So it's settled, she told herself. She'd found the cause and could treat the symptom.

(How many times had she told herself that lately?)

Not a crisis of faith, or a temptation of lust. Just Nature making itself known. It was common enough among women of her age. She was common enough. No different from any other Sister her age.

(He didn't look at her as if she was a common sight.)

A perfect nun was like a pane of glass, went the saying. Clear, without colour, just a frame for the light to pour through.

(He didn't look at her like she was made of glass.)

He looked at her as if he saw her old self. The way she did some nights, in the intolerable pressing depths of the Great Silence, seeking Shelagh there in the mirror she wasn't supposed to use except to make sure her habit was tidy and her face clean.

What was her true self?

They couldn't both be.

The Silence of God would resolve itself in time.

And yet. If she wasn't Sister Bernadette, standing there in her habit, he might have kissed her. He wanted to, it was clear. She wanted him to. Young Shelagh Mannion might have reached for him first, taking his chin in her fingertips to hold him still while she found his mouth with hers. He'd be gentle. A gentleman. But still eager. Wanting. And then his strong arms enfolding her, pulling her against his body -

A hot rush of excitement bloomed in her belly faster than she could tamp it down. This was wrong, all wrong.

"Sister, you done setting up those stations?" Sister Evangelina bustled in the side door of the Hall, rump-first with a cardboard crate of boil-washed linen on her hip. "They're queuing up out there already, and Mrs. Dobbs has brought all six."