illar he became gradually aware of the weight of
the interrogation.

A passing Brother cast at him the sweet smile of the cloister. Arnold
stopped him and transferred an immediate duty, which the other accepted
with a slightly exaggerated happiness. They might have been girls
together, with their apologies and protestations. The other Brother went
on in a little glow of pleasure, Arnold turned back into the chapel,
carrying, it seemed to him, a woman's life in his hand.

He took his seat and folded his arms almost eagerly; there was a light
of concentration in his eye and a line of compression about his lips
which had not marked his meditation upon Nourendra Lal. The vigour in
his face suggested that he found a kind of athletic luxury in what he
had to think about. Brother Colquhoun, with his flat hat clasped before
his breast, passed down the aisle. Stephen looked up with a trace of
impatience. Presently he rose hurriedly as if he remembered something,
and went and knelt before one of several paintings that hung upon the
chapel walls. They were old copies of great works, discoloured and
damaged. They had sailed round the Cape to India when the century was
young, and a lady friend of the Mission had bought them at the sale
of the effects of a ruined Begum. Arnold was one of those who could
separate them from their incongruous history and consecrate them over
again. He often found them helpful when he sought to lift his spirit,
and in any special matter a special comfort. He bent for ten minutes
before a Crucifixion, and then hastened back to his place. Only one
reflection corrected the vigorous satisfaction with which he thought out
Hilda's proposition. That disturbed him in the middle of it, and took
the somewhat irrelevant form of a speculation as to whether the
events of their last meeting should have had any place in his Thursday
confession. He was able to find almost at once a conscientious negative
for it, and it did not recur again.

He got up reluctantly when the Mission bell sounded, and indeed he had
come to the end of a very absorbing interest. His decision was final
against Hilda's scheme. His worn experience cried out at the sacrifice
in it without the illumination--which it would certainly lack--of
religious faith. She confessed to the lack, and that was all she had
to say about her motive, which, of course, placed him at an immense
disadvantage in considering it. But the question then descended to
anot