Vera listened with a steadfast face, and her tones were calm and decided when she replied.
"Dear Mrs. Rutherford, the heart knoweth its own bitterness. I think, the better you love your son the less you should come between him and a resolve that must give him peace, if it can never give him happiness."
For the first time since Mrs. Rutherford had been with her, Vera's eyes filled with tears, tears that overflowed and streamed down the colourless cheeks, and that it needed all her strength to check.
"You surprise me," the elder woman cried passionately, flinging away the hand that she had been holding. "You surprise me. I came to you for sympathy, sure that I should find it, believing that you cared for my son almost as much as I care for him. You were his chosen friend—he devoted half his days to you. The closeness of your friendship made malicious people say shameful things, and has given me many an unhappy hour; and now, at this crisis of his life, when he is bent upon burying himself alive in a monastery—entering some severe order, for whose rule of hardship and deprivation he is utterly unfit, a kind of life that will break his heart and bring him to an early grave—you preach to me of his finding peace in those dreary walls—peace—as if he were the worst of sinners."
"No, no, you don't understand me. Father Hammond has told me about the monastic life—the Benedictines, La Trappe. He has told me what happiness has been found in that life of solitude and prayer by those who have renounced the world."
"Was it you who inspired this extraordinary resolve?"
"I? No, indeed. I knew nothing of it till you told me."
"What? He could take such a step without consulting you, without confiding in you—his closest friend?"
"Was it likely that he would tell me, if he did not tell his mother?"
"He told me nothing till he had come here; to make a retreat in a monastery; to give himself time for meditation and thought, before he took any decisive step. He is here in Rome, and has been here for some time. My first knowledge of his decision was a letter he sent me from here. Such an unsatisfactory letter, giving no adequate reason for his resolve, only vague words about his weariness of life and the world."