such moods of detachment were not continuous they visited him for
weeks at a time, when his soul was full of consolation, and he was
amazed that any other life seemed possible to anyone. He seemed to
himself to have reached the very heart and secret of existence--surely
it was plain enough; God and eternity were the only things worth
considering; a life passed in an ecstasy, if such were possible, was
surely more consonant with reality than one of ordinary activities.
Activities were, after all, but concessions to human weakness and desire
for variety; contemplation was the simple and natural attitude of a soul
that knew herself and God.

But he was a man as well as a novice, and when these moods ebbed from
his soul they left him strangely bitter and dry: the clouds would
gather; the wind of discontent would begin to shrill about the angles of
his spirit, and presently the storm of desolation would be up.

He had one such tempestuous mood immediately before his profession.

During its stress he had received a letter from his father which he was
allowed to read, in which Sir James half hinted at the advisability of
postponing the irrevocable step until things were quieter, and his heart
had leaped at the possibility of escape. He did not know till then how
strong had grown the motive of appearing well in the eyes of his
relatives and of fearing to lose their respect by drawing back; and now
that his father, too, seemed to suggest that he had better re-consider
himself, it appeared that a door was opened in the high monastery wall
through which he might go through and take his honour with him.

He passed through a terrible struggle that night.

Never had the night-office seemed so wearisomely barren. The glamour
that had lighted those dark walls and the double row of cowls and
down-bent faces, the mystical beauty of the single flames here and
there that threw patches of light on the carving of the stalls and the
sombre habits, and gave visibility and significance to what without them
was obscure, the strange suggestiveness of the high-groined roof and the
higher vault glimmering through the summer darkness--all this had faded
and left him, as it seemed, sane and perceptive of facts at last. Out
there through those transepts lay the town where reasonable folk slept,
husband and wife together, and the children in the great bed next door,
with the tranquil ordinary day behind them and its fellow before; there
were the st