“I’m sorry too,” said Mark.  “But I thought you would prefer frankness.  If you will spare me a few minutes, I’ll explain why I want to join the Order of St. George.  If when you’ve heard what I have to say you still think that I’m not suitable, I shall recognize your right to be of that opinion from your experience of many young men like myself who have been tried and found wanting.”

“Did you learn that speech by heart?” the Superior inquired, raising his eyebrows mockingly.

“I see you’re determined to find fault,” Mark laughed.  “But, Reverend Father, surely you will listen to my reasons before deciding against them or me?”

“My instinct tells me you’ll be no good to us.  But if you insist on wasting my time, fire ahead.  Only please remember that, though I may be a monk, I’m a very busy man.”

Mark gave a full account of himself until the present and wound up by saying: 

“I don’t think I have any sentimental reasons for wanting to enter a monastery.  I like working among soldiers and sailors.  I am ready to put down L200 and I hope to be of use.  I wish to be a priest, and if you find or I find that when the time comes for me to be ordained I shall make a better secular priest, at any rate, I shall have had the advantage of a life of discipline and you, I promise, will have had a novice who will have regarded himself as such, but yet will have learnt somehow to have justified your confidence.”

The Superior looked down at his desk pondering.  Presently he opened a letter and threw a quick suspicious glance at Mark.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you had an introduction from Sir Charles Horner?”

“I didn’t know that I had,” Mark answered in some astonishment.  “I only met him here a few days ago for the first time.  He invited me to lunch, and he was very pleasant; but I never asked him to write to you, nor did he suggest doing so.”

“Have you any vices?” Father Burrowes asked abruptly.

“I don’t think—­what do you mean exactly?” Mark inquired.

“Drink?”

“No, certainly not.”

“Women?”

Mark flushed.

“No.”  He wondered if he should speak of the episode of St. John’s eve such a short time ago; but he could not bring himself to do so, and he repeated the denial.

“You seem doubtful,” the Superior insisted.

“As a matter of fact,” said Mark, “since you press this point I ought to tell you that I took a vow of celibacy when I was sixteen.”

Father Burrowes looked at him sharply.

“Did you indeed?  That sounds very morbid.  Don’t you like women?”

“I don’t think a priest ought to marry.  I was told by Sir Charles that you vowed yourself to the monastic life when you were not much more than seventeen.  Was that morbid?”

The Superior laughed boisterously, and Mark glad to have put him in a good humour laughed with him.  It was only after the interview was over that the echo of that laugh sounded unpleasantly in the caves of memory, that it rang false somehow like a denial of himself.