bute to monks. I was contented nearly
always. Now and then the flesh spoke, but not strongly. Remember, our
life was a life of hard and exhausting labour in the fields. The labour
kept the flesh in subjection, as the prayer lifted up the spirit. And
then, during all my earlier years at the monastery, we had an Abbe who
was quick to understand the characters and dispositions of men--Dom
Andre Herceline. He knew me far better than I knew myself. He knew,
what I did not suspect, that I was full of sleeping violence, that in my
purity and devotion--or beneath it rather--there was a strong strain of
barbarism. The Russian was sleeping in the monk, but sleeping soundly.
That can be. Half a man's nature, if all that would call to it is
carefully kept from it, may sleep, I believe, through all his life. He
might die and never have known, or been, what all the time he was.
For years it was so with me. I knew only part of myself, a real vivid
part--but only a part. I thought it was the whole. And while I thought
it was the whole I was happy. If Dom Andre Herceline had not died, today
I should be a monk at El-Largani, ignorant of what I know, contented.

"He never allowed me to come into any sort of contact with the many
strangers who visited the monastery. Different monks have different
duties. Certain duties bring monks into connection with the travellers
whom curiosity sends to El-Largani. The monk whose business it is to
look after the cemetery on the hill, where the dead Trappists are laid
to rest, shows visitors round the little chapel, and may talk with them
freely so long as they remain in the cemetery. The monk in charge of the
distillery also receives visitors and converses with them. So does the
monk in charge of the parlour at the great door of the monastery. He
sells the souvenirs of the Trappists, photographs of the church and
buildings, statues of saints, bottles of perfumes made by the monks.
He takes the orders for the wines made at the monastery, and for--for
the--what I made, Domini, when I was there."

She thought of De Trevignac and the fragments of glass lying upon the
ground in the tent at Mogar.

"Had De Trevignac----" she said in a low, inward voice.

"He had seen me, spoken with me at the monastery. When Ouardi brought in
the liqueur he remembered who I was."

She understood De Trevignac's glance towards the tent where Androvsky
lay sleeping, and a slight shiver ran through her. Androvsky saw it and