His mind misgave him a little at the conceits and fooleries and the indifferent yawnings of the choristers, at the absent-minded recital of prayers uttered by the often weary priesthood, at the beadles’ sharp eye on the fees. It misgave him still more when he thought upon the death in life which the nuns of the contemplative orders set themselves--when he learnt that the age of twenty-nine was a terrible period for the young woman to pass, that their worst punishment was endured in those hours of agony in the passionate regret for maternity when the barren womb revolts--when he learnt that some nuns, killed by the torpor of the cloisters, languish and die suddenly like the flames of candles blown out by the wind. Nay, he clutched his throat in sudden loathing and disgust and anger as he read Saint Teresa’s order in her _Way of Perfection_, that the nun who shall be guilty of insubordination should at once and for life be imprisoned in her cell. Yet---- Contemplation, prayer, pity, self-repression, asceticism! The strenuous urging of life did not find a loophole there through which to enter in, with disturbing energetic breath and organic instincts and the jumping blood of adventure. And if these things secured the refuge from the cruel struggle of living, why not accept the whole of the rest, the formalities, the etiquette, the infallibility of its pontiffs, the real presence in the wafer in the priest’s mouth, the confession to the priesthood, the surrender of the body and of the intellect and of the will and the conscience to the Church that “orders the body to be silent and the soul to suffer,” and holds that “true life begins not at birth but at death”? CHAPTER LXXVII _Wherein Foul Things are Plotted with some Glamour of Romance_ It was in this mental ferment that, one day, idly seating himself at the table where Betty had wrought, and brooding there, Noll put out his hand to one of the small brass knobs of the writing-table, and opened a little drawer. It was fragrant with the atmosphere of freshness and life and sweetness which was a part of her winsome being. It brought the witchery of her brown hair to him, her dainty ways, the beautiful firm gentle hands, the white skin that flushed so easily, the eager loyal lips, the courageous will, the happy eyes, the cheerfulness and gaiety of her glad young womanhood. In the opened drawer lay what looked like the final proofs of the chapter of a book--or had she torn the pages from some magazine? He read the Fragment from The Masterfolk: which ran: