id, after a pause, "I do demand it. I only wondered if
others felt as I do. This job of trying to analyze one's own emotions
and thoughts is a difficult one. I have been trying to do it for
years. Frankly, there are things I cannot grasp. Let me put one of
them before you now."

"Go on," said Father Murray. "I am glad the conversation is off the
worry."

"You remember, Father," said Mark, "the day I met you in your study
that eventful Sunday in London?"

The priest nodded.

"I had decided then to go out of the church, as I told you, to get away
from my faith. I thought that I had come to that decision with a clear
conscience, but I know now that I had merely built up a false one and
that that was why I sought you out--not to give up, but to defy you,
and defy my own heart at the same time. I thought that if I could
justify myself before such a man as you it would set things at rest
within me for the remainder of my days. I did not justify myself.
Ever since that day I have been attracted by the open doors of Catholic
churches. I never pass one without seeing that open door. The minute
I seriously think of religion the picture of an open church door is in
front of me; it has become almost an obsession. I seem to see a hand
beckoning from that door; some day I shall see more than the hand--my
mother's face will be behind it. I can't get away from it--and I can't
understand why."

Father Murray's eyes were serious.

"Why, my dear Mark," he answered, "you ought to know that you can't get
away. Do you suppose anybody ever got away from God? Do you suppose
any man ever could close his eyes to the fact of His existence? Then
how is it possible for you to get away from that which first told you
of God, and which so long represented to you all that you knew about
Him? There is in the Catholic faith a strange something which makes
those who have not belonged to it vaguely uneasy, but which makes those
who have once had it always unsatisfied without it. There is an
influence akin to that of the magnetic pole, only it draws
_everything_. It intrudes itself upon every life. There seems to be
no middle course between loving it and hating it; but, once known, it
cannot be ignored. It has had its chain around _you_, Mark, and you
are only now realizing that you can't cast it off."

Mark Griffin was silent. For some minutes not a word was exchanged
between the two men. Then Mark arose and, without looking