The young monk leaned a little over the table.

“Monsignor, you don’t know what you are saying.  Tell me quietly what it is that’s troubling you.  Quietly, if you please.  I can’t bear much more strain.”

The man who had lost his memory mastered himself with an effort.  His horror had surged up just now and overwhelmed him altogether, but the extraordinary quiet of the other man and his apparently frank inability to understand what was the matter brought him down again to reality.  Subconsciously, too, he perceived that it would be a relief to himself to put his developing feeling into words to another.

“You wish me to say?  Very well—–­”

He hesitated again for words.

“You are sure you’d better?  I know you’ve been ill.  I don’t want to—–­”

Monsignor waved it away with a little gesture.

“That’s all right,” he said.  “I’m not ill now.  I wish to God I were!”

“Quietly, please,” said the young man.

He swallowed in his throat and rearranged himself in his chair.  He felt himself alone and abandoned, even where he had been certain of an emotional sympathy.

“I know I’m clean against public opinion in what I think.  I’ve learnt that at last.  I thought at first that it was the other way, as . . . as I think it must have been a hundred years ago.  But I see now that all the world is against me—­all except perhaps the people who are called infidels.”

“You mean the Socialists?”

“Yes, I suppose so.  Well, it seems to me that the Church is . . .” (he hesitated, to pick his words) “is assuming an impossible attitude.  Take your own case; though that’s only one:  it’s the same everywhere.  There are the sumptuary and domestic laws; there’s the ‘repression,’ as they call it, of the Socialists.  But take your own case.  You are perfectly satisfied that your conclusions are scientific, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a Christian and a Catholic.  And yet, because these conclusions of yours are condemned—­not answered, mind you, or refuted by other scientists—­but just condemned—­condemned by ecclesiastics as contrary to what they assume to be true—­you . . . you care——­”

He broke off, struggling again with fierce emotion.  He felt a hand on his arm.

“Monsignor, you’re too excited.  May I ask you some questions instead?”

Monsignor nodded.

“Well, don’t take my case only.  Take the system, as you said just now.  I really want to know....  You think that the Socialists ought not to be repressed—­that every man ought to be free to utter his opinions, whatever they may be.  Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“However revolutionary they may be?”

Monsignor hesitated.  He had considered this point before.  He felt his answer was not wholly satisfactory.  But the monk went on.

“Suppose these opinions were subversive of all law and order.  Suppose there were men who preached murder and adultery—­doctrines that meant the destruction of society.  Would you allow these, too, to publish their opinions broadcast?”