Here he was in the old dilemma.  How often before now had he halted on the threshold of Catholicism, sounding himself thoroughly and finding always that he had no faith.  Decidedly there had been no effort on the part of God to reclaim him, and he himself had never possessed the kind of will that permits one to let oneself go, trustingly, without reserve, into the sheltering shadows of immutable dogma.

Momentarily at times when, after reading certain books, his disgust for everyday life was accentuated, he longed for lenitive hours in a cloister, where the monotonous chant of prayers in an incense-laden atmosphere would bring on a somnolence, a dreamy rapture of mystical ideas.  But only a simple soul, on which life’s wear and tear had left no mark, was capable of savouring the delights of such a self-abandon, and his own soul was battered and torn with earthly conflict.  He must admit that the momentary desire to believe, to take refuge in the timeless, proceeded from a multitude of ignoble motives:  from lassitude with the petty and repeated annoyances of existence, quarrels with the laundress, with the waiter, with the landlord; the sordid scramble for money; in a word, from the general spiritual failure of a man approaching forty.  He thought of escaping into a monastery somewhat as street girls think of going into a house where they will be free from the dangers of the chase, from worry about food and lodging, and where they will not have to do their own washing and ironing.

Unmarried, without settled income, the voice of carnality now practically stilled in him, he sometimes cursed the existence he had shaped for himself.  At times, weary of attempting to coerce words to do his bidding, he threw down his pen and looked into the future.  He could see nothing ahead of him but bitterness and cause for alarm, and, seeking consolation, he was forced to admit that only religion could heal, but religion demanded in return so arrant a desertion of common sense, so pusillanimous a willingness to be astonished at nothing, that he threw up his hands and begged off.

Yet he was always playing with the thought, indeed he could not escape it.  For though religion was without foundation it was also without limit and promised a complete escape from earth into dizzy, unexplored altitudes.  Then, too, Durtal was attracted to the Church by its intimate and ecstatic art, the splendour of its legends, and the radiant naivete of the histories of its saints.

He did not believe, and yet he admitted the supernatural.  Right here on earth how could any of us deny that we are hemmed in by mystery, in our homes, in the street,—­everywhere when we came to think of it?  It was really the part of shallowness to ignore those extrahuman relations and account for the unforeseen by attributing to fate the more than inexplicable.  Did not a chance encounter often decide the entire life of a man?  What was love, what the other incomprehensible shaping influences?  And, knottiest enigma of all, what was money?