but I feel myself bound in conscience to do so.  Very well; that is the point we have now reached.  I could not dream of separating myself from Catholic Unity, and therefore that way of escape is barred.  There was nothing for it, then, but for my judges to pronounce sentence; and that they did, ten minutes before you came in. (I saw you come in, Monsignor.) I am sentenced, that is to say, as an obstinate heretic—­as refusing to submit to the plain meaning of an ecumenical decree.  There remains Rome.  The whole trial must go there verbatim.  Three things may happen.  Either I am summoned to explain any statements that may seem obscure. (That certainly will not happen.  I have been absolutely open and clear.) Or the sentence may be quashed or modified.  And that I do not think will happen, since I have, as I know, all the theologians against me.”

There was a pause.

The prelate heard the words, and indeed followed their sense with his intellect; but it appeared to him as if this concise analysis had no more vital connection with the real facts than a doctor’s diagnosis with the misery of a mourner.  He did not want analysis; he wanted reassurance.  Then he braced himself up to meet the unfinished sentence.  “Or——­” he murmured.

“Or the sentence will be ratified,” said the monk quietly.  And again there was silence.  It was the monk again who broke it.  “Where Father Abbot seems to think you can help me perhaps, Monsignor, is in persuading the Cardinal to write to Rome.  I do not quite know what he can do for me; but I suppose the idea is that he may succeed in urging that the point is a disputed one, and that the case had better wait for further scientific as well as theological investigation.”

Monsignor flung out his hands suddenly.  The strain had reached breaking-point.

“What’s the good!” he cried.  “It’s the system—­the whole system that’s so hateful . . . hateful and impossible.”

“What?”

“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——­”