Suddenly there sounded a trumpet.  Its note broke strangely upon the monastic stillness, and, in a moment, echoed clear from the mountains.

‘The king goes forth,’ said Venantius.  ’I must leave you.  Join us speedily yonder.’

He pointed towards Rome.  On Basil’s lips quivered a word, a question, but before it could be uttered the soldier had stridden away, his casque gleaming in the sun, and his sword clanking beside him.

Again with mind confused, Basil went to his cell, and sat there head on hand, trying to recover the mood, the thoughts, with which he had risen this morning.  But everything was changed.  He could no longer think of the past; the future called to him, and its voice was like that of the Gothic trumpet, stirring his blood, urging him to activity.  At midday some one knocked, and there entered Deodatus.

‘Where is Felix?’ was Basil’s first question.

Felix was gone, but only to the town at the foot of the mountain, where he and two of his fellows would abide until their master left the monastery.  With this message Deodatus had been charged by Venantius.  He added that Felix had been dismissed, at the abbot’s order, during Basil’s interview with the king.

‘I understand,’ said Basil in himself; and during the rest of the day he strove with all the force of his will to recover calm and pious thoughts.  In the night that followed he slept little; it was now the image of Veranilda that hovered before him and kept him wakeful, perturbed with a tender longing.  God, it might be, would pardon him his offence against the Divine law; but could he look for forgiveness from Veranilda?  When he thought of the king’s last words he was lured with hope; when he reasoned upon this hope, it turned to a mocking emptiness.  And through the next day, and the next again, his struggle still went on.  He worked and prayed as usual, and read the Psalms of penitence not once only, but several times in the four-and-twenty hours; that other psalm, to which he had turned for strengthening of the spirit, he no longer dared to open.  And all this time he scarce spoke with any one; not that the brethren looked upon him with less kindness, or held him at a distance, but the rebuke of his own conscience kept him mute.  He felt that his communion with these holy men was in seeming only, and it shamed him to contrast their quiet service of the Eternal with the turbid worldliness of his own thoughts.

During these days the abbot was not seen.  Venturing, at length, when he happened to find himself alone with Marcus, to speak of this, he learnt that the holy father was not in his wonted health; Marcus added that the disorder had resulted from the visit of the king.  After Totila’s departure, Benedict had passed hours in solitary prayer, until a faintness came upon him, from which he could not yet recover.  Basil was turning away sadly, when the monk touched his arm, and said in a troubled voice: