nts, fatigues, and ordeals of life in
the mere existence of the woman he loved. He was at the moment of
humility which is the first and last in all really great passions. He
asked for nothing; it was all too glorious even to have the privilege of
offering gifts, of feeling the readiness to die ten deaths for her sake,
of finding all the recompenses of eternity in the soft depths of her
bright eyes. But as he was too much in earnest to analyse these
sentiments, he could neither gauge his own reticence nor justify it to
Brigit herself. Nor could she, with all her tenderness and womanly
instincts, help him in that matter--their one possibility of
estrangement. She lacked the knowledge which renders verbal confidences
unnecessary; she was too loving and too human to be happy as an
inspiration and an inspiration only; she also had a great desire to
give, to aid, to prove her devotion, to be the friend and the
fellow-pilgrim.

CHAPTER XII

Brilliant sunlight lit up the grey spires and threatening pinnacles of
St. Malo. The back of the ancient fortress was hidden in white mist, but
the houses which rose above the battlements facing the harbour, and the
shops and little taverns near the quay, shone out in brightness, their
windows glittering under the sky where straying clouds, driven by the
wind, were melting, as they fled, into the all-encompassing blue ether.
Some pigeons and wild gulls circled above the earthworks, darting down,
at times, between the massive oak piles which, forced deep into the
sand, were covered with shining seaweed. The piercing note of the
military bugle, the crack of the cabmen's long whips, the clatter of
wooden shoes, and the Angelus bells then chiming, made up a volume of
sound which fell on Robert's ears with all the poignant strangeness of
an old song heard again after many years. A hundred memories flocked
into his mind at the first distant view of that familiar scene: memories
of his boyhood, its errors, its visions, its ambitions; his revolt
against nature as he understood it, and his desire to keep his heart
and soul and senses for the service of God, and the custody of his own
ideals. The very centre of his thoughts was here: here he had found the
first beginnings of his faith and love. How often he had walked alone
upon those ramparts with his New Testament and the _Morte d'Arthur_,
striving, in the fervour of romantic sentiment, to combine the standards
of knightly chivalry with t