to sweet. Some sentences
that he has written mean nothing to me at all....

Only this I see clearly, both from my talks with Father Hildebrand and
from the diary which Frank amplified at his bidding--that Frank had
reached the end of a second stage in his journey, and that a third was
to begin.

It is significant also, I think, in view of what is to follow, that the
last initiation of this stage should have taken place on such an
occasion as this.

CHAPTER V

(I)

There are certain moods into which minds, very much tired or very much
concentrated, occasionally fall, in which the most trifling things take
on them an appearance of great significance. A man in great anxiety, for
example, will regard as omens or warnings such things as the ringing of
a bell or the flight of a bird. I have heard this process deliberately
defended by people who should know better. I have heard it said that
those moods of intense concentration are, as a matter of fact states of
soul in which the intuitive or mystical faculties work with great
facility, and that at such times connections and correlations are
perceived which at other times pass unnoticed. The events of the world
then are, by such people, regarded as forming links in a chain of
purpose--events even which are obviously to the practical man merely the
effects of chance and accident. It is utterly impossible, says the
practical man, that the ringing of a bell, or the grouping of
tea-leaves, or the particular moment at which a picture falls from a
wall, can be anything but fortuitous: and it is the sign of a weak and
superstitious mind to regard them as anything else. There can be no
purpose or sequence except in matters where we can perceive purpose or
sequence.

Of course the practical man must be right; we imply that he is right,
since we call him practical, and I have to deplore, therefore, the fact
that Frank on several occasions fell into a superstitious way of looking
at things. The proof is only too plain from his own diary--not that he
interprets the little events which he records, but that he takes such
extreme pains to write them down--events, too, that are, to all
sensibly-minded people, almost glaringly unimportant and insignificant.

* * * * *

I have two such incidents to record between the the travelers' leaving
the Benedictine monastery and their arriving in London in December. The
Major and Gertie have probably long