In This House of Brede

by Rumer Godden

This was not only love but compassion, being with another, sharing his suffering in fellow feeling, and Philippa’s ironical smile touched her lips; how paradoxical to have fellow feelings when you are just about to leave your fellows!

‘Where did you learn to do that with eyes?’ whispered Abbess Catherine. ‘From my mother,’ said Stefan Duranski, but she saw he was close to tears.

‘Life in Christ is no trick of the imagination,’ she had often said, ‘but solid theological fact.’