“Any relative—any sister?”
“No.”
“Then you don't know what it is; that's why you won't give me an answer.”
“Don't ask me, Brother Paul.”
“Why not?”
“It might only make you the more uneasy if I told you what——”
The lay brother let his spade fall, then slowly, very slowly, picked it up again and said:
“I understand. You needn't say any more. I shall never ask you again.”
The bell rang for Evensong, and John hurried away. “If it were only some one who was deserving of it!” he thought—“some one who was worthy that a man should risk his soul to save her!”
At supper and in church he saw Brother Paul going about like a man in a waking dream, and when he went up to bed he heard him moving restlessly in the adjoining cell. The fear of betraying himself was becoming unbearable, and he leaped up and stepped out into the corridor, intending to ask the Superior to give him another room elsewhere. But he stopped and came back. “It's not brave,” he thought, “it's not kind, it's not human,” and, saying this again and again, as one whistles when going by a haunted house, he covered his ears and fell asleep.