white villages at their edge, the boats gliding upon them towards the white city, the distant mountains.  Having little to do, I sat day after day for hours meditating, and looking out upon this distant world.  I remember specially one evening, at sunset, just before I had to go to the chapel, that a sort of awe came upon me as I looked across the lakes.  The sky was golden, the waters were dyed with gold, out of which rose the white sails of boats.  The mountains were shadowy purple.  The little minarets of the mosques rose into the gold like sticks of ivory.  As I watched my eyes filled with tears, and I felt a sort of aching in my heart, and as if—­Domini, it was as if at that moment a hand was laid, on mine, but very gently, and pulled at my hand.  It was as if at that moment someone was beside me in the cemetery wishing to lead me out to those far-off waters, those mosque towers, those purple mountains.  Never before had I had such a sensation.  It frightened me.  I felt as if the devil had come into the cemetery, as if his hand was laid on mine, as if his voice were whispering in my ear, ’Come out with me into that world, that beautiful world, which God made for men.  Why do you reject it?’

“That evening, Domini, was the beginning of this—­this end.  Day after day I sat in the cemetery and looked out over the world, and wondered what it was like:  what were the lives of the men who sailed in the white-winged boats, who crowded on the steamers whose smoke I could see sometimes faintly trailing away into the track of the sun; who kept the sheep upon the mountains; who—­who—­Domini, can you imagine—­no, you cannot—­what, in a man of my age, of my blood, were these first, very first, stirrings of the longing for life?  Sometimes I think they were like the first birth-pangs of a woman who is going to be a mother.”

Domini’s hands moved apart, then joined themselves again.

“There was something physical in them.  I felt as if my limbs had minds, and that their minds, which had been asleep, were waking.  My arms twitched with a desire to stretch themselves towards the distant blue of the lakes on which I should never sail.  My—­I was physically stirred.  And again and again I felt that hand laid closely upon mine, as if to draw me away into something I had never known, could never know.  Do not think that I did not strive against these first stirrings of the nature that had slept so long!  For days I refused to let myself look out from the cemetery.  I kept my eyes upon the ground, upon the plain crosses that marked the graves.  I played with the red-eyed doves.  I worked.  But my eyes at last rebelled.  I said to myself, ’It is not forbidden to look.’  And again the sails, the seas, the towers, the mountains, were as voices whispering to me, ’Why will you never know us, draw near to us?  Why will you never understand our meaning?  Why will you be ignorant for ever of all that has been created for man to know?’ Then the pain within me became