"Your impertinence is amazing!" she exclaimed. "It is time that somebody told you the truth. It is hard for me to say unkind things to one who has saved my life, but you ought to know how you appear. You have got yourself into a thoroughly unwholesome state of mind and body; and unless you get out of it you will ruin your whole career. Does it seem to you that a man who has so little control over himself is a fit leader for others? Can't you see that you have brooded over this question of celibacy until you are completely morbid? Find some wholesome, right-minded woman, Mr. Ashe; love her and marry her, and be done with all this wretched, unwholesome mawkishness. As for me, when I married once, I married for life. My son will never be given a second father." He had risen also, and his self-possession had returned to him. "I have annoyed you," he said with a new dignity. "You are perhaps right in saying that I am morbid, but in what I said to-day I was trying to put self entirely out of the question. There is only one thing more that I want to say; and that is that it is not fair to judge our order by me. I know only too well how natural it is that you should think all the men at the Clergy House weak and despicable like me; but that is not so. They are sincere, self-forgetful fellows. You have seen my friend Wynne. He, for instance, is as manly and fine and honest as any man alive." "I do not misjudge them or you, Mr. Ashe. I only feel that in these past weeks you have not been yourself. We will forget it all, and I hope that you will forgive me if I have hurt you." "I have nothing to forgive. It is you who must do that. Good-by." He went away with the remembrance of her beautiful eyes looking in pity into his, and once more the phrase of the Persian came into his mind like a refrain: "O thou, to the arch of whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave!" XXV WHOM THE FATES HAVE MARKED Comedy of Errors, i. I Maurice soon heard from his lawyer that the missing desk had passed into the hands of his sister-in-law, Mrs. Singleton, and that that lady was staying at Montfield as the guest of Mrs. Ashe. He determined to go down himself, feeling unwilling to trust business so important to any other. In order to leave the Clergy House, it was necessary to have permission from the Father Superior, and on Monday of Shrove week Wynne requested what the deacons jestingly called among themselves a dispensation. He did not think it honest to conceal the reason for his wishing leave of absence, and briefly related the story of his finding his old nurse and of her revelation.