he boughs fell down from the tree I saw a woman's face, tear-stained,
staring at me. It seemed to me a lovely face.

"'Which is his grave?' she said. I pointed to the grave of the young
monk, which could now be seen through the gap I had made, descended the
ladder, and went away to the farthest corner of the cemetery. And I did
not look again in the direction of the woman's face.

"Who she was I do not know. When she went away I did not see. She loved
the monk who had died, and knowing that women cannot enter the precincts
of the monastery, she had come to the outside wall to cast, if she
might, a despairing glance at his grave.

"Domini, I wonder--I wonder if you can understand how that incident
affected me. To an ordinary man it would seem nothing, I suppose. But
to a Trappist monk it seemed tremendous. I had seen a woman. I had done
something for a woman. I thought of her, of what I had done for her,
perpetually. The gap in the cypress tree reminded me of her every time
I looked towards it. When I was in the cemetery I could hardly turn
my eyes from it. But the woman never came again. I said nothing to the
Reverend Pere of what I had done. I ought to have spoken, but I did not.
I kept it back when I confessed. From that moment I had a secret, and it
was a secret connected with a woman.

"Does it seem strange to you that this secret seemed to me to set me
apart from all the other monks--nearer the world? It was so. I felt
sometimes as if I had been out into the world for a moment, had known
the meaning that women have for men. I wondered who the woman was. I
wondered how she had loved the young monk who was dead. He used to sit
beside me in the chapel. He had a pure and beautiful face, such a face,
I supposed, as a woman might well love. Had this woman loved him, and
had he rejected her love for the life of the monastery? I remember one
day thinking of this and wondering how it had been possible for him to
do so, and then suddenly realising the meaning of my thought and turning
hot with shame. I had put the love of woman above the love of God,
woman's service above God's service. That day I was terrified of myself.
I went back to the monastery from the cemetery, quickly, asked to see
the Reverend Pere, and begged him to remove me from the cemetery, to
give me some other work. He did not ask my reason for wishing to change,
but three days afterwards he sent for me, and told me that I was to
be placed in charge of th