that stirred to a faint surprise and contempt the jaded spirit of one reluctant listener present among them.  This was a stranger who had arrived that evening at the monastery, and who intended remaining there for the night—­a man of distinguished and somewhat haughty bearing, with a dark, sorrowful, poetic face, chiefly remarkable for its mingled expression of dreamy ardor and cold scorn, an expression such as the unknown sculptor of Hadrian’s era caught and fixed in the marble of his ivy-crowned Bacchus-Antinous, whose half-sweet, half-cruel smile suggests a perpetual doubt of all things and all men.  He was clad in the rough-and-ready garb of the travelling Englishman, and his athletic figure in its plain-cut modern attire looked curiously out of place in that mysterious grotto which, with its rocky walls and flaming symbol of salvation, seem suited only to the picturesque prophet-like forms of the white-gowned brethren whom he now surveyed, as he stood behind their ranks, with a gleam of something like mockery in his proud, weary eyes.

“What sort of fellows are these?” he mused—­“fools or knaves?  They must be one or the other,—­else they would not thus chant praises to a Deity of whose existence there is, and can be, no proof.  It is either sheer ignorance or hypocrisy,—­or both combined.  I can pardon ignorance, but not hypocrisy; for however dreary the results of Truth, yet Truth alone prevails; its killing bolt destroys the illusive beauty of the Universe, but what then?  Is it not better so than that the Universe should continue to seem beautiful only through the medium of a lie?”

His straight brows drew together in a puzzled, frowning line as he asked himself this question, and he moved restlessly.  He was becoming impatient; the chanting of the monks grew monotonous to his ears; the lighted cross on the altar dazzled him with its glare.  Moreover he disliked all forms of religious service, though as a lover of classic lore it is probable he would have witnessed a celebration in honor of Apollo or Diana with the liveliest interest.  But the very name of Christianity was obnoxious to him.  Like Shelley, he considered that creed a vulgar and barbarous superstition.  Like Shelley, he inquired, “If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced?” He began to wish he had never set foot inside this abode of what he deemed a pretended sanctity, although as a matter of fact he had a special purpose of his own in visiting the place-a purpose so utterly at variance with the professed tenets of his present life and character that the mere thought of it secretly irritated him, even while he was determined to accomplish it.  As yet he had only made acquaintance with two of the monks, courteous, good-humored personages, who had received him on his arrival with the customary hospitality which it was the rule of the monastery to afford to all belated wayfarers journeying across the perilous Pass of Dariel.  They had asked him no questions as to his name or nation, they had simply