g thorns, and court smarting wounds as a
deliverance from temptation. For the Divine love had sought me, and
penetrated me, and created a great need in me; like a seed that wants
room to grow. I had been brought up in carelessness of the true faith;
I had not studied the doctrines of our religion; but it seemed to take
possession of me like a rising flood. I felt that there was a life of
perfect love and purity for the soul; in which there would be no uneasy
hunger after pleasure, no tormenting questions, no fear of suffering.
Before I knew the history of the saints, I had a foreshadowing of their
ecstasy. For the same truth had penetrated even into pagan philosophy:
that it is a bliss within the reach of man to die to mortal needs, and
live in the life of God as the Unseen Perfectness. But to attain that I
must forsake the world: I must have no affection, no hope, wedding me to
that which passeth away; I must live with my fellow-beings only as human
souls related to the eternal unseen life. That need was urging me
continually: it came over me in visions when my mind fell away weary
from the vain words which record the passions of dead men: it came over
me after I had been tempted into sin and had turned away with loathing
from the scent of the emptied cup. And in visions I saw the meaning of
the Crucifix."

He paused, breathing hard for a minute or two: but Romola was not
prompted to speak again. It was useless for her mind to attempt any
contact with the mind of this unearthly brother: as useless as for her
hand to try and grasp a shadow. When he spoke again his heaving chest
was quieter.

"I felt whom I must follow: but I saw that even among the servants of
the Cross who professed to have renounced the world, my soul would be
stifled with the fumes of hypocrisy, and lust, and pride. God had not
chosen me, as he chose Saint Dominic and Saint Francis, to wrestle with
evil in the Church and in the world. He called upon me to flee: I took
the sacred vows and I fled--fled to lands where danger and scorn and
want bore me continually, like angels, to repose on the bosom of God. I
have lived the life of a hermit, I have ministered to pilgrims; but my
task has been short: the veil has worn very thin that divides me from my
everlasting rest. I came back to Florence that--"

"Dino, you _did_ want to know if my father was alive," interrupted
Romola, the picture of that suffering life touching her again with the
d