ong the religious houses, for the
prince of them, the contemplative Carthusian, had been struck at, and no
one knew where the assault would end.

Meanwhile, Chris had heard no further news from Ralph.` He thought of
writing to him, and even of visiting him again, but his heart sickened
at the thought of it. It was impossible, he told himself, that any
communication should pass between them until his brother had forsaken
his horrible business; the first sign of regret must come from the one
who had sinned. He wondered sometimes who the girl was, and, as a
hot-headed monk, suspected the worst. A man who could live as Ralph was
living could have no morals left. She had been so friendly with him, so
ready to defend him, so impatient, Chris thought, of any possibility of
wrong. No doubt she, too, was one of the corrupt band, one of the great
ladies that buzzed round the Court, and sucked the blood of God's
people.

His own interior life, however, so roughly broken by his new
experiences, began to mend slowly as the days went on.

He had begun, like a cat in a new house, to make himself slowly at home
in the hostel, and to set up that relation between outward objects and
his own self that is so necessary to interior souls not yet living in
detachment. He arranged his little room next the Prior's to be as much
as possible like his cell, got rid of one or two pieces of furniture
that distracted him, set his bed in another corner, and hung up his
beads in the same position that they used to occupy at Lewes. Each
morning he served the Prior's mass in the tiny chapel attached to the
house, and did his best both then and at his meditation to draw in the
torn fibres of his spirit. At moments of worship the supernatural world
began to appear again, like points of living rock emerging through sand,
detached and half stifled by external details, but real and abiding.
Little by little his serenity came back, and the old atmosphere
reasserted itself. After all, God was here as there; grace, penance, the
guardianship of the angels and the sacrament of the altar was the same
at Southwark as at Lewes. These things remained; while all else was
accidental--the different height of his room, the unfamiliar angles in
the passages, the new noises of London, the street cries, the clash of
music, the disordered routine of dally life.

Half-way through June, after a long morning's conversation with a
stranger, the Prior sent for him.

He was s