He listened to their retreating footsteps. “He has gone,” he murmured. The passing bell continued to ring out minute by minute, and presently there was the sound of singing. “It is the service for the dead,” he told himself. After a while both the bell and the singing ceased, and then there was no sound anywhere except the dull rumble of the traffic in the city outside--the deep murmur of the mighty sea that flows on forever. “What am I doing?” he asked himself. “What bolts and bars are keeping me? I am guilty of a folly. I am degrading myself.” At midday Brother Andrew came with his food. “Brother Paul is buried,” he sang, “the coffin was beautiful--it was covered with flowers--we buried him in his cassock, with his beads and psalter--we left the cross on his breast--he loved it and died with it in his hands--the Father has come home--he said mass this morning.” John Storm could bear no more. He pushed the lay brother aside and made straight for the Superior's room. The Father was sitting before the fire, looking sad and low and weary. He rose to his feet with a painful smile, as John broke into his cell with blazing eyes, and cried in a choking voice: “Father, I can not live the religious life any longer! I have tried to--with all my soul and strength I've tried to, but I can not, I can not! This life of prayer and penance and meditation is stifling me, and corrupting me, and crushing the man out of me, and I can not bear it.” “What are you saying, my son?” “I have been deceiving you and myself and everybody.” “Deceiving me?” “It was for my own ends and not Brother Paul's that I helped him to break obedience, and so injure his health and hasten his death.” “Your own?” “I, too, had a sister in the world, and my heart was hungry for news of her.” “A sister?” “Some one nearer than a sister--and all my spiritual life has been a sham.” “My son, my son!” “Forgive me, Father. I shall love you and honour you and revere you always; but I must break my obedience and leave you, or I shall be a hypocrite and a liar and a cheat.” XVIII. The dinner party at the Home Secretary's took place on Wednesday, in the week after Easter. It had rained during the day, but cleared up toward night. Glory and Koenig had taken an omnibus to Waterloo Place, and then walked up the wide street that ends with the wide steps going down to the park. Two lines of lofty stone houses go off to right and left, and the house they were going to was in one of them. A footman received them with sombre but easy familiarity. The artistes? Yes. They were shown into the library, and light refreshments were brought in to them on a tray. Three other members of the choral company were there already. Glory was seeing it all for the first time, and Koenig was describing and explaining everything in broken whispers.