d, so I thought I
knew--never to know.

"When I came out of the chapel into the _hotellerie_ I met our guest--I
do not say his name. What would be the use?--in the corridor. It was
almost dark. There were ten minutes before the time for locking up
the door and going to bed. Francois, the servant, was asleep under the
arcade.

"'Shall we go on to the path and have a last breath of air?' the
stranger said.

"We stepped out and walked slowly up and down.

"'Do you not feel the beauty of peace?' I asked.

"I wanted him to say yes. I wanted him to tell me that peace,
tranquillity, were beautiful. He did not reply for a moment. I heard him
sigh heavily.

"'If there is peace in the world at all,' he said at length, 'it is only
to be found with the human being one loves. With the human being one
loves one might find peace in hell.'

"We did not speak again before we parted for the night.

"Domini, I did not sleep at all that night. It was the first of many
sleepless nights, nights in which my thoughts travelled like winged
Furies--horrible, horrible nights. In them I strove to imagine all the
stranger knew by experience. It was like a ghastly, physical effort. I
strove to conceive of all that he had done--with the view, I told myself
at first, of bringing myself to a greater contentment, of realising how
worthless was all that I had rejected and that he had grasped at. In
the dark I, as it were, spread out his map of life and mine and
examined them. When, still in the dark, I rose to go to the chapel I was
exhausted. I felt unutterably melancholy. That was at first. Presently
I felt an active, gnawing hunger. But--but--I have not come to that yet.
This strange, new melancholy was the forerunner. It was a melancholy
that seemed to be caused by a sense of frightful loneliness such as I
had never previously experienced. Till now I had almost always felt God
with me, and that He was enough. Now, suddenly, I began to feel that I
was alone. I kept thinking of the stranger's words: 'If there is peace
in the world at all it is only to be found with the human being one
loves.'

"'That is false,' I said to myself again and again. 'Peace is only to be
found by close union with God. In that I have found peace for many, many
years.'

"I knew that I had been at peace. I knew that I had been happy. And yet,
when I looked back upon my life as a novice and a monk, I now felt as if
I had been happy vaguely, foolishly, bloodlessly,