And those dreams! How significant now were the
words of the Compline hymn, and how much it behoved a Christian soul to
vanquish these ill dreams against beholding which the defence of the
Creator was invoked. He had vowed celibacy; yet already, three months
after his twenty-first birthday, after never once being troubled with
the slightest hint that the vow he had taken might be hard to keep, his
security had been threatened. How right the Rector had been about that
frightening beatitude.
Mark had taken the direction of Wychford, and when he reached the
bridge at the bottom of the road from Wych-on-the-Wold he thought he
would turn aside and visit the Greys whom he had not seen for a long
time. He was conscious of a curiosity to know if the feelings aroused by
Esther could be aroused by Monica or Margaret or Pauline. He found the
dear family unchanged and himself, so far as they were concerned,
equally unchanged and as much at his ease as he had ever been.
"And what are you going to do now?" one of them asked.
"You mean immediately?"
Mark could not bring himself to say that he did not know, because such a
reply would have seemed to link him with the state of mind in which he
had been thrown yesterday afternoon.
"Well, really, I was thinking of going into a monastery," he announced.
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