hrough his knowledge, was alive to him. There must be, almost
within sound of a shout, hundreds of living persons like himself,
yet all intent, in some form or another, upon that same
overwhelming silence in which facts could be received and
relations readjusted.

Yet even this, as he reflected upon it, had certain elements of
terror. Here again, under another disguise, was the force that
he had feared in London--the force that had sent Dom Adrian
noiselessly out of life, that proposed to deal with refractory
instincts in human nature--such as manifested themselves in
Socialism--as a householder might deal with a plague of mice,
drastically and irresistibly; the force that moved the wheels
and drove the soundless engines of that tremendous
social-religious machine of which he too was a part. It was here
too then; it was this that had closed him in here for three days
in his tiny domicile in this great dumb city; it was this that
held the whole under an invisible discipline; it was this that
had looked at him out of the hawk's-eyes, and spoken to him
through the colourless lips of the monk who had given him his
instructions this morning. . . .

Once more then his individuality began to reassert itself, and to
attempt to cast off the spell even of this peace that promised
relief. He became aware of an extraordinary loneliness of soul,
an isolation in the deepest regions of his soul from all others.
The rest of the world, it seemed, had an understanding about
these matters. Father Jervis and the Carthusian no doubt had
talked him over; they accepted as an established and self-evident
philosophy this universal unity and authority; they regarded
himself, who could not yet so accept it, as a spiritual, if not
an actual mental invalid. . . . He had been brought here to be
treated. . . . Well, he would hold his own.

And then another mood came on him--a temptation, as it seemed to
him then, to fling personal responsibility overboard; to accept
this tremendous claim of authority to control even the thoughts
of the heart. Surely peace lay this way. To submit to this
crowned and sceptred Christ; to reject for ever the other--this
meant relief and sanity. . . .

He walked more and more quickly and abruptly up and down the
little tiled space. He was conscious of a conflict all confused
with dust and smoke. He began to hesitate as to which was the
higher, even which was the tolerable course--to sink his
individuality, to thro