re the altar, and a flood of moonlight fell through the coloured
panes of the clerestory windows. Dino stood passive in that flood of
moonlight, almost forgetting why he had come. His brain was dizzy, his
heart was sick. His mind was distracted with the thought of a guilt
which he did not feel to be his own, of sin for which his conscience did
not smite him. For, with a strange commingling of clear-sightedness and
submission to authority, he still believed that he had done perfectly
right in giving up his claim to the Scotch estate, and yet, with all his
heart, desired to feel that he had done wrong. And when the words with
which Father Cristoforo had reproached him came back to his mind, his
burden seemed greater than he could bear. With a moan of pain he sank
down close beside the altar-steps. And there, through the midnight
hours, he lay alone and wrestled with himself.

It was no use. Everything fell from him in that hour except that faith
and that love which had been the controlling powers of his life. He had
loved Brian as a brother; and he had done well: he had loved
Elizabeth--though he had not known that the dreaming fancies which had
lately centred round her deserved the name which the Prior had given to
them--and he had not done ill; and it was right that he should give to
them, what might, perhaps, avail to make their lives a little
happier--at any rate all that he had to give. The Prior had said that he
was wrong. And would the good God, whom he had always loved and
worshipped from the days of his earliest boyhood, would the Good God
condemn him, too! He did not think so. He was not sorry for what he had
done at all.

No, he did not repent.

But how would it fare with him next day if he told the Prior this, the
inmost conviction of his heart? He would be told again that he was not
fit to be a monk. And the desire to be a monk--curious as it may seem to
us--had grown up with Dino as a beautiful ideal. Was he now to be thrust
out into the world--the world where men stole and lied and stabbed each
other in the dark, all for the sake of a few acres of land or a handful
of gold pieces--and denied the hard, ascetic, yet tranquil and
finely-ordered life which he had hoped to lead, when he put on his
monkish robe, for the remainder of his days?

Dino was an enthusiast: he might, perhaps, have been disenchanted if he
had lived as one of themselves amongst the brethren who seemed to him so
enviable; but just now