mood of seeing all
contraries but as degrees in an ultimate truth, he might have assented.
But in that dim chamber, with burning faces around him and the shadow
of death overhead, he discovered in himself a new scrupulousness. It
was the case of Esau; he was bidden sell his birthright for pottage, and
affection could not gloze over the bargain.

"I have no vocation," he said sadly. "I would fain do the will of God,
but God must speak His will to each heart, and He does not speak thus to
me."

There was that in the words which woke a far-away memory of her
girlhood. Once another in a forest inn had spoken thus to her. She
stretched out her hand to him, and he covered it with kisses.

But in the night the priests stirred her fears again, and next morning
there was another tragic pleading, from which Philip fled almost in
tears. Presently he found himself denied her chamber, unless he could
give assurance of a changed mind. And so the uneasy days went on, till
in a dawn of wind amid a great praying and chanting the soul of the
Countess Catherine passed, and Aimery reigned in Beaumanoir.

The place had grown hateful to Philip and he made ready to go. For him
in his recalcitrancy there was only a younger son's portion, the little
seigneury of Eaucourt, which had been his mother's. The good Aimery
would have increased the inheritance, but Philip would have none of it.
He had made his choice, and to ease his conscience must abide strictly
by the consequences. Those days at Beaumanoir had plucked him from
his moorings. For the moment the ardour of his quest for knowledge had
burned low. He stifled in the air of the north, which was heavy with
the fog of a furious ignorance. But his mind did not turn happily to the
trifling of his Italian friends. There was a tragic greatness about
such as his grandmother, a salt of nobility which was lacking among the
mellow Florentines. Truth, it seemed to him, lay neither with the old
Church nor the New Learning, and not by either way could he reach the
desire of his heart.

Aimery bade him a reluctant farewell. "If you will not keep me company
here, I go to the wars. At Beaumanoir I grow fat. Ugh, this business of
dying chills me." And then with a very red face he held out a gold
ring. "Take it, Philip. She cherished it, and you were her favourite and
should wear it. God knows I have enough."

Likewise he presented him with a little vellum-bound book. "I found this
yesterday, and you