“I stay here to finish the revising of my book,” said the monk quietly.

* * * * *

The man who had lost his memory had piled impression on impression during the last forty-eight hours.  There was first the case of the German girl.  She had been examined by the same doctors as those who had certified to her state half an hour before the cure, and the result had been telegraphed over the entire civilized world.  The fracture was completely repaired; and although she was still weak from her long illness, she gained strength every hour.  Then there was the case of the Russian.  He too had received back his sight, although not instantaneously; it had come to him step by step.  An hour ago he had been pronounced healed, and had passed the usual tests in the examination-rooms.  But these cases, and others like them which the priests had investigated, were only a part of the total weight of impressions which Monsignor Masterman had received.  He had seen here for himself a relation between Science and Faith—­a co-operation between them, with the exigencies of each duly weighed and observed by them both—­which set Nature and Supernature before him in a completely new light.  As Mr. Manners had said at Westminster a week or two before, the two seemed to have met at last, each working from different quarters, on a platform on which they could work side by side.  The facts were no longer denied by either party.  Science allowed for the mysteries of Faith; Faith recognized the achievements of Science.  Each granted that the other possessed a perfectly legitimate sphere of action in which the methods proper to that sphere were imperative and final.  The scientist accepted the fact that Religion had a right to speak in matters that lay beyond scientific data; the theologian no longer denounced as fraudulent or disingenuous the claims of the scientist to exercise powers that were at last found to be natural.  Neither needed to establish his own position by attacking that of his partner, and the two accordingly, without prejudice or passion, worked together to define yet further that ever-narrowing range of ground between the two worlds which up to the present remained unmapped.  Suggestion, for example, acting upon the mutual relations of body and mind, was recognized by the theologian as a force sufficient to produce phenomena which in earlier days he had claimed as evidently supernatural.  And, on the other side, the scientist no longer made wild acts of faith in nature, in attributing to her achievements which he could not for an instant parallel by any deliberate experiment.  In a word, the scientist repeated, “I believe in God “; and the theologian, “I recognize Nature.”

Monsignor sat apart in silence, while the others talked.

He had thought in Rome that he had reached interior conviction; he understood now in Lourdes that his conviction had not gone so deep as he had fancied.  He had learned in Versailles that the Church could reorganize society, in Rome that she could reconcile nations; he had seen finally in Lourdes that she could resolve philosophies.