Dom Anthony was in a hurry, and scuffled off presently to tell the Prior, and in an hour or two there was an air of excitement through the house.  Chris, however, heard nothing more except the little that the novice-master chose to tell him, and felt a certain contempt for the anxious-eyed monks who broke the silence by whispers behind doors, and the peace of the monastery by their perturbed looks.

* * * * *

Even when a little later in the summer the commissioner came down to tender the oath of succession Chris heard little and cared less.  He was aware of a fine gentleman striding through the cloister, lolling in the garth, and occupying a prominent seat in the church; he noticed that his master was long in coming to him after the protracted chapter-meetings, but it appeared to him all rather an irrelevant matter.  These things were surely quite apart from the business for which they were all gathered in the house—­the opus Dei and the salvation of souls; this or that legal document did not seriously affect such high matters.

The novice-master told him presently that the community had signed the oath, as all others were doing, and that there was no need for anxiety:  they were in the hands of their Religious Superiors.

“I was not anxious,” said Chris abruptly, and Dom James hastened to snub him, and to tell him that he ought to have been, but that novices always thought they knew everything, and were the chief troubles that Religious houses had to put up with.

Chris courteously begged pardon, and went to his lessons wondering what in the world all the pother was about.

But such moods of detachment were not continuous they visited him for weeks at a time, when his soul was full of consolation, and he was amazed that any other life seemed possible to anyone.  He seemed to himself to have reached the very heart and secret of existence—­surely it was plain enough; God and eternity were the only things worth considering; a life passed in an ecstasy, if such were possible, was surely more consonant with reality than one of ordinary activities.  Activities were, after all, but concessions to human weakness and desire for variety; contemplation was the simple and natural attitude of a soul that knew herself and God.

But he was a man as well as a novice, and when these moods ebbed from his soul they left him strangely bitter and dry:  the clouds would gather; the wind of discontent would begin to shrill about the angles of his spirit, and presently the storm of desolation would be up.

He had one such tempestuous mood immediately before his profession.

During its stress he had received a letter from his father which he was allowed to read, in which Sir James half hinted at the advisability of postponing the irrevocable step until things were quieter, and his heart had leaped at the possibility of escape.  He did not know till then how strong had grown the motive of appearing well in the eyes of his relatives and of fearing to lose their respect by drawing back; and now that his father, too, seemed to suggest that he had better re-consider himself, it appeared that a door was opened in the high monastery wall through which he might go through and take his honour with him.