ged with human emotion so that Mark sitting in his corner could
fancy that he was lost in the sensuous glooms behind some _Mater
Addolorata_ of the seventeenth century. He longed to be back in Chatsea.
He was dismayed at the prospect of one day perhaps having to cope with
this quality of devotion. He shuddered at the thought, and for the first
time he wondered if he had not a vocation for the monastic life. But was
it a vocation if one longed to escape the world? Must not a true
vocation be a longing to draw nearer to God? Oh, this nauseating bouquet
of feminine perfumes . . . it was impossible to pay attention to the
sermon.

Mark went to bed early with a headache; but in the morning he woke
refreshed with the knowledge that they were going back to Chatsea,
although before they reached home the journey had to be broken at High
Thorpe whither Father Rowley had been summoned to an interview by the
Bishop of Silchester on account of refusing to communicate some people
at the mid-day celebration. Dr. Crawshay was at that time so ill that
he received the Chatsea Missioner in bed, and on hearing that he was
accompanied by a young man who hoped to take Holy Orders the Bishop sent
word for Mark to come up to his bedroom, where he gave him his blessing.
Mark never forgot the picture of the Bishop lying there under a
chequered coverlet looking like an old ivory chessman, a white bishop
that had been taken in the game and put off the board.

"And now, Mr. Rowley," Dr. Crawshay began when he had motioned Mark to a
chair. "To return to the subject under discussion between us. How can
you justify by any rubric of the Book of Common Prayer non-communicating
attendance?"

"I don't justify it by any rubric," the Missioner replied.

"Oh, you don't, don't you?"

"I justify it by the needs of human nature," the Missioner continued.
"In order to provide the necessary three communicants for the mid-day
Mass. . . ."

"One moment, Mr. Rowley," the Bishop interrupted. "I beg you most
earnestly to avoid that word. You know my old-fashioned Protestant
notions," he added, and his eyes so tired with pain twinkled for a
moment. "To me there is always something distasteful about that word."

"What shall I substitute, my lord?" the Missioner asked. "Do you object
to the word 'Eucharist'?"

"No, I don't object to that, though why you should want a Greek name
when we have a beautiful English name like the Lord's Supper, why you
should want to