"It's the system," he cried again. "From beginning to end it's the system that's wrong. I hate it more every day. It's brutal, utterly brutal and unchristian." He stared miserably at the young monk, astonished at the cold look in his eyes.
The monk looked at him questioningly—without a touch of answering sympathy, it seemed—merely with an academic interest.
"I don't understand, Monsignor. What is it that you——"
"You don't understand! You tell me you don't understand! You who are suffering under it! Why——"
"You think I'm being unjustly treated? Is that it? Of course I too don't think that——"
"No, no, no," cried the elder man. "It's not you in particular. I don't know about that—I don't understand. But it's that any living being can live under such tyranny—such oppression of free thought and judgment! What becomes of science and discovery under a system like this? What becomes of freedom—of the right to think for oneself? Why——"
The young monk leaned a little over the table.
"Monsignor, you don't know what you are saying. Tell me quietly what it is that's troubling you. Quietly, if you please. I can't bear much more strain."
The man who had lost his memory mastered himself with an effort. His horror had surged up just now and overwhelmed him altogether, but the extraordinary quiet of the other man and his apparently frank inability to understand what was the matter brought him down again to reality. Subconsciously, too, he perceived that it would be a relief to himself to put his developing feeling into words to another.
"You wish me to say? Very well—-"