sired to see and had not seen unless in visions of faith and
hope that never found fulfilment.

He whispered softly to himself sometimes; old forgotten names and
scenes and fragments came back. It seemed to him as if in some
other life he had once stood here--surely there in that
transept--a stranger and an outcast--watching a liturgy which was
strange to him, listening to music, lovely indeed to the ear, yet
wholly foreign in this home of monks and prayer. Surely great
statues had stood before them--statesmen in perukes who silently
declaimed secular rhetoric in the house of God, swooning women,
impossible pagan personifications of grief, medallions, heathen
wreaths, and broken columns. Yet here as he looked there was
nothing but the decent furniture of a monastic church--tall
stalls, altars, images of the great ones of heaven, wide eloquent
spaces that gave room to the soul to breathe. . . . He had
dreamed the other perhaps; he had read histories; he had seen
pictures. . . .

The organ broke off in full blast; and under the high roofs came
pealing the cry of a trumpet. He awoke with a start; the
Cardinals were already on their feet at a gesture from a master
of ceremonies. Then he stepped into his place and went down with
them to the choir-gates to meet the King. . . .

(II)

It was in the Jerusalem chamber when the King was gone, a couple
of hours later, that the new abbot of Westminster came up to him.
He was a small, rosy man with very clear, beautiful eyes.

"Can you speak to me for five minutes, Monsignor?" he said.

The other glanced across at the Cardinals.

"Certainly, father abbot."

The two went out, down a little passage, and into a
parlour. They sat down.

"It's about Dom Adrian," said the abbot abruptly.

Monsignor checked the sudden shock that ran through him. He knew
he must show no emotion.

"It's terribly on my conscience," went on the other, with
distress visibly growing as he spoke. "I feel I ought to have
seen which way he was going. He was one of my novices, you know,
before we were transferred. . . . He would have been here to-day
if all had been well. He was to have been one of my monks. I
suggested his name."

Monsignor Masterman began to deprecate the
self-accusation of the other.

"Yes, yes," said the abbot sharply. "But the point is whether
anything can be done. The trial begins on Monday, you see."

"Will he submit?"

The abbot shook his head.

"I don't think so