I
don't know about that--I don't understand. But it's that any
living being can live under such tyranny--such oppression of free
thought and judgment! What becomes of science and discovery under
a system like this? What becomes of freedom--of the right to
think for oneself? Why----"

The young monk leaned a little over the table.

"Monsignor, you don't know what you are saying. Tell me quietly
what it is that's troubling you. Quietly, if you please. I can't
bear much more strain."

The man who had lost his memory mastered himself with an effort.
His horror had surged up just now and overwhelmed him altogether,
but the extraordinary quiet of the other man and his apparently
frank inability to understand what was the matter brought him
down again to reality. Subconsciously, too, he perceived that it
would be a relief to himself to put his developing feeling into
words to another.

"You wish me to say? Very well---"

He hesitated again for words.

"You are sure you'd better? I know you've been ill. I
don't want to---"

Monsignor waved it away with a little gesture.

"That's all right," he said. "I'm not ill now. I wish to God I were!"

"Quietly, please," said the young man.

He swallowed in his throat and rearranged himself in his chair.
He felt himself alone and abandoned, even where he had been
certain of an emotional sympathy.

"I know I'm clean against public opinion in what I think. I've
learnt that at last. I thought at first that it was the other
way, as . . . as I think it must have been a hundred years ago.
But I see now that all the world is against me--all except
perhaps the people who are called infidels."

"You mean the Socialists?"

"Yes, I suppose so. Well, it seems to me that the Church is . . ."
(he hesitated, to pick his words) "is assuming an impossible
attitude. Take your own case; though that's only one: it's the
same everywhere. There are the sumptuary and domestic laws;
there's the 'repression,' as they call it, of the Socialists. But
take your own case. You are perfectly satisfied that your
conclusions are scientific, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"You're a Christian and a Catholic. And yet, because these
conclusions of yours are condemned--not answered, mind you, or
refuted by other scientists--but just condemned--condemned by
ecclesiastics as contrary to what they assume to be
true--you . . . you care----"

He broke off, struggling again with fierce emotion. He felt a
hand on hi