when they gave the response.

* * * * *

The hour of recreation before Compline, which upon great Feasts was wont
to be so glad, lay heavily upon the brethren that night, so that Mark
could not bear to sit in the Cloister; there being no guests in the
Abbey for his attention, he sat in the library and wrote to the Rector.

The Abbey,

Malford, Surrey.

Easter Sunday.

My dear Rector,

I should have written before to wish you all a happy Easter, but
I've been making up my mind during the last fortnight to leave the
Order, and I did not want to write until my mind was made up. That
feat is now achieved. I shall stay here until St. George's Day, and
then the next day, which will be St. Mark's Eve, I shall come home
to spend my birthday with you. I do not regret the year and six
months that I have spent at Malford and Aldershot, because during
that time, if I have decided not to be a monk, I am none the less
determined to be a priest. I shall be 23 this birthday, and I hope
that I shall find a Bishop to ordain me next year and a Theological
College to accept responsibility for my training and a beneficed
priest to give me a title. I will give you a full account of myself
when we meet at the end of the month; but in this letter, written
in sad circumstances, I want to tell you that I have learnt with
the soul what I have long spoken with the lips--the need of God. I
expect you will tell me that I ought to have learnt that lesson
long ago upon that Whit-Sunday morning in Meade Cantorum church.
But I think I was granted then by God to desire Him with my heart.
I was scarcely old enough to realize that I needed Him with my
soul. "You're not so old now," I hear you say with a smile. But in
a place like this one learns almost more than one would learn in
the world in the time. One beholds human nature very intimately. I
know more about my fellow-men from association with two or three
dozen people here than I learnt at St. Agnes' from association with
two or three hundred. This much at least my pseudo-monasticism has
taught me.

We have passed through a sad time lately at the Abbey, and I feel
that for the Community sorrows are in store. You know from my
letters that there have been divisions, and you know how hard I
have