"Yes, I remember. I was not afraid of myself. I belong to the great army of triflers and dilettanti—I am not of the stuff that passionate lovers are made of."
"But now Death has intervened, and the situation is changed. Two years hence you might marry your cousin without shame to either, without disrespect to the dead. Are you capable of renouncing that hope by burying yourself in a cloister? Are you equal to the sacrifice? Would there be no looking back, no repentance?"
"I shall never marry my cousin Vera."
"Because she does not love you? Is that the reason?"
"No need to enter into details, or to count the cost. I have made up my mind. For once in my life I have a purpose and a will."
"You seem in earnest."
The words came slowly, like a spoken doubt, and the priest's searching eyes were on the pale face in front of him. The countenance where the refinement of race—a long line of well-born men and women, showed in every lineament.
"This sudden resolve of yours is inexplicable," the priest continued in a troubled voice, after a silence that seemed long. "It is not in your temperament or your manner of life, since you came into a man's inheritance, to cut yourself off from all that makes life pleasant to a young man with talent, attractiveness, and independence. I would give much to know your reason for such a step."
"Haven't I told you, my dear friend? Welt Schmerz. Isn't that enough?"
"No, it is not enough. Welt Schmerz is the chronic disease of a decadent age. If every sufferer from Welt Schmerz were to turn monk, this world would be a monastery. It is a phase in every man's life—or a pose. I know it is not that with you. There is something behind, Claude—something at the back of your mind. Something that you must tell me, before I can be of any real help to you. But you are your mother's son, and were you steeped in sin, I would do my uttermost to help you. Come to me the day after to-morrow. I shall have had time to think over your case, and you will be in a better mood for considering the situation: to surrender this worldly life and all it holds is not a light thing that a man should do in a fit of the blues, a man still on the sunward side of forty. I, who have entered my seventh decade, have no yearnings for a woollen gown."