The passing bell continued to ring out minute by minute, and presently there was the sound of singing. “It is the service for the dead,” he told himself.
After a while both the bell and the singing ceased, and then there was no sound anywhere except the dull rumble of the traffic in the city outside—the deep murmur of the mighty sea that flows on forever.
“What am I doing?” he asked himself. “What bolts and bars are keeping me? I am guilty of a folly. I am degrading myself.”
At midday Brother Andrew came with his food. “Brother Paul is buried,” he sang, “the coffin was beautiful—it was covered with flowers—we buried him in his cassock, with his beads and psalter—we left the cross on his breast—he loved it and died with it in his hands—the Father has come home—he said mass this morning.”
John Storm could bear no more. He pushed the lay brother aside and made straight for the Superior's room.
The Father was sitting before the fire, looking sad and low and weary. He rose to his feet with a painful smile, as John broke into his cell with blazing eyes, and cried in a choking voice:
“Father, I can not live the religious life any longer! I have tried to—with all my soul and strength I've tried to, but I can not, I can not! This life of prayer and penance and meditation is stifling me, and corrupting me, and crushing the man out of me, and I can not bear it.”
“What are you saying, my son?”
“I have been deceiving you and myself and everybody.”
“Deceiving me?”