monk a sense of relief and
deliverance. He felt already, in the terrible storm of agitation which
this confession had aroused within him, that nature was not dead, and that
he was infinitely farther from the victory of passionless calm than he had
supposed. He was still a man,--torn with human passions, with a love which
he must never express, and a jealousy which burned and writhed at every
word which he had wrung from its unconscious object. Conscience had begun
to whisper in his ear that there would be no safety to him in continuing
this spiritual dictatorship to one whose every word unmanned him,--that it
was laying himself open to a ceaseless temptation, which in some blinded,
dreary hour of evil might hurry him into acts of horrible sacrilege; and
he was once more feeling that wild, stormy revolt of his inner nature that
so distressed him before he left the convent.

This proposition of Agnes' struck him as a compromise. It would take her
from him only for a season, she would go under his care and direction, and
he would gradually recover his calmness and self-possession in her
absence. Her pilgrimage to the holy places would be a most proper and fit
preparation for the solemn marriage-rite which should forever sunder her
from all human ties and make her inaccessible to all solicitations of
human love. Therefore, after an interval of silence, he answered,--

"Daughter, your plan is approved. Such pilgrimages have ever been held
meritorious works in the Church, and there is a special blessing upon
them."

"My father," said Agnes, "it has always been in my heart from my childhood
to be the bride of the Lord; but my grandmother, who brought me up, and to
whom I owe the obedience of a daughter, utterly forbids me: she will not
hear a word of it. No longer ago than last Monday she told me I might as
well put a knife into her heart as speak of this."

"And you, daughter, do you put the feelings of any earthly friend before
the love of your Lord and Creator who laid down His life for you? Hear
what He saith:--'He that loveth father or mother more than me is not
worthy of me.'"

"But my poor old grandmother has no one but me in the world, and she has
never slept a night without me; she is getting old, and she has worked for
me all her good days;--it would be very hard for her to lose me."

"Ah, false, deceitful heart! Has, then, thy Lord not labored for thee? Has
He not borne thee through all the years of thy life?