"the coffin was beautiful--it was covered with flowers--we buried
him in his cassock, with his beads and psalter--we left the cross on his
breast--he loved it and died with it in his hands--the Father has come
home--he said mass this morning."

John Storm could bear no more. He pushed the lay brother aside and made
straight for the Superior's room.

The Father was sitting before the fire, looking sad and low and weary. He
rose to his feet with a painful smile, as John broke into his cell with
blazing eyes, and cried in a choking voice:

"Father, I can not live the religious life any longer! I have tried
to--with all my soul and strength I've tried to, but I can not, I can
not! This life of prayer and penance and meditation is stifling me, and
corrupting me, and crushing the man out of me, and I can not bear it."

"What are you saying, my son?"

"I have been deceiving you and myself and everybody."

"Deceiving me?"

"It was for my own ends and not Brother Paul's that I helped him to break
obedience, and so injure his health and hasten his death."

"Your own?"

"I, too, had a sister in the world, and my heart was hungry for news of
her."

"A sister?"

"Some one nearer than a sister--and all my spiritual life has been a
sham."

"My son, my son!"

"Forgive me, Father. I shall love you and honour you and revere you
always; but I must break my obedience and leave you, or I shall be a
hypocrite and a liar and a cheat."

XVIII.

The dinner party at the Home Secretary's took place on Wednesday, in the
week after Easter. It had rained during the day, but cleared up toward
night. Glory and Koenig had taken an omnibus to Waterloo Place, and then
walked up the wide street that ends with the wide steps going down to the
park. Two lines of lofty stone houses go off to right and left, and the
house they were going to was in one of them.

A footman received them with sombre but easy familiarity. The artistes?
Yes. They were shown into the library, and light refreshments were
brought in to them on a tray. Three other members of the choral company
were there already. Glory was seeing it all for the first time, and
Koenig was describing and explaining everything in broken whispers.

A band was playing in the well of the circular staircase, and a second
footman stood in an alcove behind an outwork of hats and overcoats. The
first footman reappeared. Were the artistes ready to go to the
drawing-room?

They foll