to say. He felt
entirely powerless, and not even desirous to speak. He
understood that to obey was simply inevitable, and that silence
was what was wished.

"I do not wish you to rehearse at all what you intend to say to
me to-morrow," went on the monk suddenly. "You are here to show
me yourself and your wounds, and there must be no false shame.
You will say what you feel to-morrow; and I shall say what I
think. I wish you a happy retreat."

Then, again without a word, but with that same inclination of his
head, he went swiftly across the room and was gone.

It was all completely unexpected, and Monsignor sat a few
minutes, astonished, without moving. He had not uttered a
syllable; and yet, in a sense, that seemed quite natural. He had
seen the monk look at him keenly as he came in, and was aware
that this had been an inspection by some new kind of expert.
Probably the monk had heard the outlines of the case from Father
Jervis, and had just looked in this morning, not only to give his
instructions, but to ratify by some peculiar kind of intuition
the account he had heard. Yet the ignominy of it all did not
touch him in the least. He felt more than ever like a child in
the hands of an expert, and, like a child, content to be so.
Conventions and the mutual little flatteries of the world outside
appeared meaningless here. . . .

He said some Office presently, and then set out to explore his ground.

The room he was in communicated with a lobby outside, from which
a staircase descended to a little cloistered and glazed
ambulatory opening on to the garden. Another staircase rose to a
door obviously leading to the roof. Besides the bedroom door
there were two others: the one which he entered first took him
into a little sitting-room also looking on to the garden, and
furnished simply with a table, an easy chair, and a few books;
the other opened directly on to a tiny gallery looking out
sideways upon a perfectly plain sanctuary, with a stone altar, a
lamp, and a curtained tabernacle, which seemed to be a chapel of
some church whose roof only was visible beyond a high closed
screen. He knelt here a minute or two, then he passed back again
to the lobby and ascended the staircase leading to the roof. He
thought that from here he might form some idea as to the place
in which he was.

The flat roof, tiled across, and guttered so as to allow the
rainwater to escape, at first seemed closed in on all sides with
walls over