n?

Stephen parted his lips to answer yes and then withheld the word
suddenly. The priest waited for the answer and added:

--I mean, have you ever felt within yourself, in your soul, a desire
to join the order? Think.

--I have sometimes thought of it, said Stephen.

The priest let the blindcord fall to one side and, uniting his hands,
leaned his chin gravely upon them, communing with himself.

--In a college like this, he said at length, there is one boy or perhaps
two or three boys whom God calls to the religious life. Such a boy is
marked off from his companions by his piety, by the good example he
shows to others. He is looked up to by them; he is chosen perhaps as
prefect by his fellow sodalists. And you, Stephen, have been such a boy
in this college, prefect of Our Blessed Lady's sodality. Perhaps you
are the boy in this college whom God designs to call to Himself.

A strong note of pride reinforcing the gravity of the priest's voice
made Stephen's heart quicken in response.

To receive that call, Stephen, said the priest, is the greatest honour
that the Almighty God can bestow upon a man. No king or emperor on this
earth has the power of the priest of God. No angel or archangel in
heaven, no saint, not even the Blessed Virgin herself, has the power of
a priest of God: the power of the keys, the power to bind and to loose
from sin, the power of exorcism, the power to cast out from the
creatures of God the evil spirits that have power over them; the power,
the authority, to make the great God of Heaven come down upon the altar
and take the form of bread and wine. What an awful power, Stephen!

A flame began to flutter again on Stephen's cheek as he heard in this
proud address an echo of his own proud musings. How often had he seen
himself as a priest wielding calmly and humbly the awful power
of which angels and saints stood in reverence! His soul had loved
to muse in secret on this desire. He had seen himself, a young
and silent-mannered priest, entering a confessional swiftly,
ascending the altarsteps, incensing, genuflecting, accomplishing
the vague acts of the priesthood which pleased him by reason of
their semblance of reality and of their distance from it. In that
dim life which he had lived through in his musings he had
assumed the voices and gestures which he had noted with various
priests. He had bent his knee sideways like such a one, he had
shaken the thurible only slightly like such a one, his