She was too miserable to resist him. The storm of feeling through which she had passed had exhausted her wholly; and the pining for his step and voice had become an anguish driving her to him. "I told you to make me afraid!" she said mournfully, as she found herself once more upon his breast--"but you can't! There is something in me that fears nothing--not even the breaking of both our hearts." CHAPTER II A week later the Jesuit scholastic Edward Williams arrived at Bannisdale. In Laura his coming roused a curiosity half angry, half feminine, by which Helbeck was alternately harassed and amused. She never tired of asking questions about the Jesuits--their training, their rules, their occupations. She could not remember that she had ever seen one till she made acquaintance with Father Leadham. They were alternately a mystery and a repulsion to her. Helbeck smilingly told her that she was no worse than the mass of English people. "They have set up their bogey and they like it." She would be surprised to find how simple was the Jesuit secret. "What is it?--in two words?" she asked him. "Obedience--training. So little!" he laughed at her, and took her hand tenderly. She inquired if Mr. Williams were yet "a full Jesuit." "Oh dear no! He has taken his first vows. Now he has three years' philosophy, then four years' theology. After that they will make him teach somewhere. Then he will take orders--go through a third year's noviceship--get a doctor's degree, if he can--and after that, perhaps, he will be a professed 'Father.' It isn't done just by wishing for it, you see." The spirit of opposition reared its head. She coloured, laughed--and half without intending it repeated some of the caustic things she had heard occasionally from her father or his friends as to the learning of Jesuits. Helbeck, under his lover's sweetness, showed a certain restlessness. He hardly let himself think the thought that Stephen Fountain had been quoted to him very often of late; but it was there. "I am no judge," he said at last. "I am not learned. I dare say you will find Williams ignorant enough. But he was a clever boy--besides his art." "And they have made him give up his art?" "For a time--yes--perhaps altogether. Of course it has been his great renunciation. His superiors thought it necessary to cut him off from it entirely. And no doubt during the novitiate he suffered a great deal. It has been like any other starved faculty." The girl's instincts rose in revolt. She cried out against such waste, such mutilation. The Catholic tried to appease her; but in another language. He bade her remember the Jesuit motto. "A Jesuit is like any other soldier--he puts himself under orders for a purpose." "And God is to be glorified by the crashing out of all He took the trouble to give you!"