He had progressed a long way with the work now, and was engaged on the
pages that contained the antiphons for Lent. The design was soberer
here; the angels that had rested among the green branches and early
roses of Septuagesima, thrusting here a trumpet and there a harp among
the leaves, had taken flight, and grave menacing creatures were in their
place. A jackal looked from behind the leafless trunk, a lion lifted
his toothed mouth to roar from a thicket of thorns, as they had lurked
and bellowed in the bleak wilderness above the Jordan fifteen hundred
years ago. They were gravely significant now, he thought; and scarcely
knowing what he did he set narrow human eyes in the lion's face (for he
knew no better) and broadened the hanging jaws with a delicate line or
two.

Then with a fierce impulse he crowned him, and surmounted the crown with
a cross.

And all the while his mind toiled at the problem. There were three
things open to him on the morrow. Either he might refuse to sign the
surrender, and take whatever consequences might follow; or he might sign
it; and there were two processes of thought by which he might take that
action. By the first he would simply make an act of faith in his
superiors, and do what they did because they did it; by the second he
would sign it of his own responsibility because he decided to think that
by doing so he would be taking the best action for securing his own
monastic life.

He considered these three. To refuse to sign almost inevitably involved
his ruin, and that not only, and not necessarily, in the worldly sense;
about that he sincerely believed he did not care; but it would mean his
exclusion from any concession that the King might afterwards make. He
certainly would not be allowed under any circumstances, to remain in the
home of his profession; and if the community was shifted he would not be
allowed to go with them. As regards the second alternative he wondered
whether it was possible to shift responsibility in that manner; as
regards the third, he knew that he had very little capability in any
case of foreseeing the course that events would take.

Then he turned it all over again, and considered the arguments for each
course. His superiors were set over him by God; it was rash to set
himself against them except in matters of the plainest conscience. Again
it was cowardly to shelter himself behind this plea and so avoid
responsibility. Lastly, he was bound to judge for