hoped that he was not being
cowardly in thus running away; but after having assured Esther that she
could count on his behaving normally for the rest of her visit, he found
his sleep that night so profoundly disturbed by feverish visions that
when morning came he dreaded his inability to behave as both he would
wish himself and she would wish him to behave. Flight seemed the only
way to find peace. He was shocked not so much by being in love with
Esther, but by the suddenness with which his desires had overwhelmed
him, desires which had never been roused since he was born. If in an
instant he could be turned upside down like that, could he be sure that
upon the next occasion, supposing that he fell in love with somebody
more suitable, he should be able to escape so easily? His father must
have married his mother out of some such violent impulse as had seized
himself yesterday afternoon, and resentiment about his weakness had
spoilt his whole life. And those dreams! How significant now were the
words of the Compline hymn, and how much it behoved a Christian soul to
vanquish these ill dreams against beholding which the defence of the
Creator was invoked. He had vowed celibacy; yet already, three months
after his twenty-first birthday, after never once being troubled with
the slightest hint that the vow he had taken might be hard to keep, his
security had been threatened. How right the Rector had been about that
frightening beatitude.

Mark had taken the direction of Wychford, and when he reached the
bridge at the bottom of the road from Wych-on-the-Wold he thought he
would turn aside and visit the Greys whom he had not seen for a long
time. He was conscious of a curiosity to know if the feelings aroused by
Esther could be aroused by Monica or Margaret or Pauline. He found the
dear family unchanged and himself, so far as they were concerned,
equally unchanged and as much at his ease as he had ever been.

"And what are you going to do now?" one of them asked.

"You mean immediately?"

Mark could not bring himself to say that he did not know, because such a
reply would have seemed to link him with the state of mind in which he
had been thrown yesterday afternoon.

"Well, really, I was thinking of going into a monastery," he announced.

Pauline clapped her hands.

"Now I think that is just what you ought to do," she said.

Then followed questions about which Order he proposed to join; and Mark
ashamed to go back on