erness.

Looking at the vast structure, I was ready to believe that St. Bruno
had waved his staff in the shadow of a rough-hewn mountain, saying:
"Let there be a monastery," and suddenly, there was a monastery; but
our motor, quivering with nervous energy before a door in the high
wall, snatched me back to practicalities.

Molly, leaning quietly back in the tonneau beside the Perpetual
Mushroom, saw us coming from afar off, and waved a hand of absurd
American smallness. By the time we were within speaking distance, she
was out of the car and coming toward us.

"We were so hungry, that we lunched while we waited," she explained,
"so now you and Jack can go to the hotellerie and have something
quickly. We'll walk in the woods until you come back, and then, as
Mercedes doesn't seem to mind, we'll all go into the monastery
together."

It was not until the door of the Grande Chartreuse had opened to
receive us, and closed again behind our backs, shutting us into a
large empty quadrangle, that the Spirit of the place took us by the
hand.

Over the steep grey roofs (pointed like monkish hands with finger-tips
joined in prayer) we gazed up at mountain peaks, grey and green, and
pointing also to a heaven which seemed strangely near.

The spell of the vast, the stupendous silence fell upon us. Somehow,
Molly drifted from me to Jack as we walked noiselessly on, led by a
silent guide, as if she craved the warm comfort of a loved presence,
and for a few brief moments the veiled Mercedes paced step for step
beside me. But we did not speak to each other.

What a tragic, tremendous silence it was! Yes, I wanted the Boy. I
should have been glad of the touch of his little shoulder. Thinking of
him thus, by some accident the sleeve of Mercedes's coat brushed
against mine. Still, not a word from either of us. I did not even say,
"I beg your pardon," for that would have been to obtrude my voice upon
the thousand voices of the Silence; dead voices, living voices; voices
of passionate protest, voices of heartbreaking homesickness, of aching
grief and longing, never to be assuaged. Poor monks--poor banished men
who had loved their home, and belonged to it, as the clasping tendrils
of old, old ivy belong to the oak.

How dared we come here into this place from which they had been
driven, we aliens? I had not known it would grip me so by the throat.
How full the emptiness was!--as full to my mind as the air is of
motes when a bar of s