ls, for a little over three months when Enid
came to her future home. The rooms were on the side of the quadrangle
facing the valley, and from his little window he could distinctly see
the great white house, with its broad terraces standing out against the
dark background formed by the trees which crowned the ridge behind it.
He, of course, knew perfectly well to whom it belonged and who would one
day be mistress of it, and one day he saw from the _Times_, the only
secular newspaper admitted into St. Augustine's, that Mr. and Mrs.
Reginald Garthorne had returned from their wedding trip on the
Continent, and, after a day or two in London, would proceed for a few
weeks to Garthorne Abbey to recuperate before the fatigues of the
season, of which it was generally expected Mrs. Garthorne would be one
of the most brilliant ornaments.

The sight of it, the knowledge of all the splendours that it contained,
of all the worldly wealth of which it was the material sign, had not
affected him in the least. He had already lifted himself beyond the
possibility of envying anyone the possession of such things as these. He
could see over and beyond them as a man on a mountain top might look
over a little spot on the plain beneath, which to those who dwelt in it
was a great and splendid city.

Even the knowledge that Enid was coming to the Abbey as the wife of its
future master only drew just a single quiet sigh from his lips, only
caused him to give one swift look back into the world that he had left,
for after all this was only what he had expected, what he knew to be
almost inevitable when he had first made up his mind to sacrifice his
love to what he believed to be his duty.

She had passed out of his existence and he had passed out of hers.
Henceforth their life-circles might touch, but they could never
intersect each other. Of course, they would meet again in the world, but
only as friends, with perhaps a warmer hand-clasp for the sake of the
days that were past and gone for ever, but that was all. He had but one
mistress now, the Church. He was hers body and soul to the end, for he
had sworn an allegiance which could not be broken save at the risk of
his own soul.

One morning, about a week after he had read the paragraph in the
_Times_, he was out on the hillside, going from cottage to cottage of
the hundred or so sprinkled round the high road across the hills, for it
was his day to carry out the parochial duties of the frater