His voice faltered, his head drooped.

‘I say not,’ murmured the listener, ’that you do wrong to love your country.’

’Holy father, I were a hypocrite if I spoke of my country first of all.  For all but a year gone by, another love has possessed me.  Forgive me that I dare to speak such a word before you.’

The abbot turned his eyes to the window.  Upon the sill had settled two doves, which seemed to regard him curiously.  He made a soft gesture with his hand, and the birds flew away.

‘Speak on,’ he said after brief reflection, and with the same indulgence.  ‘He who tells all speaks not to man but to God.’

And Basil told all; told it with humble simplicity, with entire truthfulness, recounting his history from the day when he first beheld Veranilda to the dreadful hour when Marcian’s blood stained his hands.  He began in calm, but the revival of emotions which had slept during his sickness and his convalescence soon troubled him profoundly.  Not only did the dormant feelings wake up again, but things which he had forgotten rushed into his memory.  So, when he came to the last interview with Veranilda, he remembered, for the first time since that day, what he had said to her, and the recollection dismayed him.  He burst into tears, overwhelmed at once with misery and shame.

‘It may be,’ he sobbed, ’that she was innocent.  Suffering had driven me mad, and I uttered words such as never should have passed my lips.  If she is guiltless, there lives no baser man than I. For I reproached her—­my father, how you will scorn me!—­I cast at her in reproach her father’s treachery.’

The abbot’s brow rested upon his hand.  It was thus he had listened, unmoving, throughout the story; nor did he now stir, until Basil, having ceased alike from speaking and from tears, had sat for a little while in stillness and reflection.  Then at length he turned his eyes upon the young man, and spoke with sad gravity.

’Even so, even so.  You gave your heart to a woman, and worshipped at her feet, and behold there has come upon you the guilt of blood.  Not, you would protest, through your own fault; your friend was false to you, and in just wrath you slew him.  Who made you, O Basil, his judge and his executioner?’

‘Father, I seek not to excuse my sin.’

‘It is well.  And what penance will you lay upon yourself?’

Utterly subdued by awe, oblivious of his own will in the presence of one so much more powerful, Basil murmured that whatever penance the man of God saw fit to impose that would he perform.

‘Nay,’ said Benedict gently, ’that is too like presumption.  Say rather, you would endeavour to perform it.  I will believe that if I bade you fast long, or repeat many prayers, you would punctually obey me.  But what if I demanded of you that against which not only your flesh, but all the motive of your life, rebelled?  It were not too much; yet dare you promise to achieve it?’