sincerity and truth.”  God would have revealed His Will, and we, submitting our Order to His Will, should have ceased to think for ourselves, to judge our brethren, to criticize our seniors, to suspect that brother of personal ambition, this brother of toadyism.  The Community is being devoured by the Dragon and, unless St. George comes to the rescue of his Order on Thursday week, it will perish.  Perhaps I have not much faith in St. George.  He has always seemed to me an unreal, fairy-tale sort of a saint.  I have more faith in St. Benedict and his Holy Rule.  But I have no vocation for the contemplative life.  I don’t feel that my prayers are good enough to save my own soul, let alone the souls of others.  I must give Jesus Christ to my fellow-men in the Blessed Sacrament.  I long to be a priest for that service.  I don’t feel that I want by my own efforts to make people better, or to relieve poverty, or to thunder against sin, or to preach them up to and through Heaven’s gates.  I want to give them the Blessed Sacrament, because I know that nothing else will be the slightest use to them.  I know it more positively to-night than I have ever known it, because as I sit here writing to you I am starved.  God has given me the grace to understand why I am starved.  It is my duty to bring Our Lord to souls who do not know why they are starved.  And if after nearly two years of Malford this passion to bring the Sacraments to human beings consumes me like a fire, then I have not wasted my time, and I can look you in the face and ask for your blessing upon my determination to be a priest.

     Your ever affectionate

     Mark.

When Mark had written this letter, and thus put into words what had hitherto been a more or less nebulous intention, and when in addition to that he had affixed a date to the carrying out of his intention, he felt comparatively at ease.  He wasted no time in letting the Father Superior know that he was going to leave; in fact he told him after he had confessed to him before making his Communion on Easter Thursday.

“I’m sorry to lose you, my dear boy,” said Father Burrowes.  “Very sorry.  We are just going to open a priory in London, though that is a secret for the moment, please.  I shall make the announcement at the Easter Chapter.  Yes, some kind friends have given us a house in Soho.  Splendidly central, which is important for our work.  I had planned that you would be one of the brethren chosen to go there.”

“It’s very kind of you, Reverend Father,” said Mark.  “But I’m sure that you understand my anxiety not to lose any time, now that I feel perfectly convinced that I want to be a priest.”

“I had my doubts about you when you first came to us.  Let me see, it was nearly two years ago, wasn’t it?  How time flies!  Yes, I had my doubts about you.  But I was wrong.  You seem to possess a real fixity of purpose.  I remember that you told me then that you were not sure you wanted to be a monk.  Rare candour!  I could have professed a hundred monks, had I been willing to profess them within ten minutes of their first coming to see me.”