ed dwells amongst
the stars, why are their faces turned from me? Oh! that man knew a
little more or a little less--enough to pierce the mystery of yon
star-crowned heavens, or so little as to gaze on them unmoved and
unfeeling! What is our little knowledge? A mockery, a dreary, hopeless
mockery! I had better have rotted in that miserable monastery, a
soulless, lifeless being, than have stepped out to struggle with a
world which is only a terrible riddle to me. I cannot reason with it;
I cannot laugh or weep with it; I am in it, but not of it! Why was I
sent? Oh I why was I sent?"

The snapping of a twig caused him to turn suddenly round. Paul de Vaux
was advancing through the ruins, with a loose cloak thrown over his
evening clothes.

Father Adrian turned round to meet him. The two men stood for a moment
face to face without speaking. Both recognised that this interview
was to be no ordinary one; and in a certain sense, each seemed to be
measuring the other's strength. It was Paul who spoke first.

"We have met before, Father Adrian."

"Yes."

"You will scarcely wonder that I am surprised to see you here in
England. Have you left the monastery at Cruta?"

"I left it a month after you did."

"But your vows,--were they not for life?" Paul asked.

Father Adrian smiled scornfully. "I was not bound to Cruta," he
answered. "There had been complaints, and I was there to investigate
them. The monastery was poverty and disease-stricken. It is closed now
forever."

"Then you are no monk?"

Father Adrian shook his head. "I am, and I am not. In my youth I
served my novitiate, but I never took the oaths. The cloisters are for
holier men than I."

"Then who are you?"

"I am--Father Adrian, priest of the Roman Catholic Church, I can tell
you no more."

The moonlight was falling full upon his dark, striking face. Paul,
with bent brows, scanned every feature of it intently. Father Adrian
bore the scrutiny without flinching and without discomposure. Only
once the colour mounted a little into his cheeks as the eyes of the
two men met.

"What brings you to Vaux Abbey, Father Adrian?" Paul asked at length.

"To see your home," was the quiet reply.

"What do you want with me? It must be something more than curiosity
which has brought you all this way. What is it?"

Father Adrian was silent. Yet his silence was not one of confusion.
He was looking down through the gaps in the ruined chapel walls at the
dark Gothic fro