At night the Prior sent for him. Dino's hearing was dulled by fatigue and fasting: he did not understand at first what was said. But, by-and-bye, he knew that he was ordered to go into the guest-room, where the Prior awaited his coming. The command gave Dino an additional pang: the guest-room was for strangers, not for one who had been as a child of the house. But he lifted himself up feebly from the cold stones, and followed the lay-brother, who had brought the message, to the appointed place.

The Prior was an austere man, but not devoid of compassion, nor even of sympathy. He received Dino with no relaxation of his rather grim features, but told him to eat and drink before speaking. "I will not talk to you fasting," he said; and Dino felt conscious of some touch of compassion in the old man's eyes as he looked at him.

Dino sat, therefore, and tried to eat and drink, but the effort was almost in vain. When he had swallowed a few mouthfuls of bread and water mixed with a little wine, which was all that he could touch, he stood up in token that he was ready for the Prior's questions; and Father Cristoforo, who had meanwhile been walking up and down the room with a restless air, at once stopped short and began to speak.

Let it be remembered that Dino felt towards this rugged-faced, stern-voiced priest as loving as a son feels towards a wise father. His affections were strong; and he had few objects on which to expend them. The Prior's anger meant to him not merely the displeasure of one in authority, but the loss of a love which had shielded and enveloped him ever since he came to the monastery-school when he was ten years old. He seemed to have an absolute need of it; without it, life was impossible to go on.

Father Cristoforo was not without visitings of the same sort of feeling; but he allowed no trace of such soft-heartedness to appear as he put Dino through a searching examination concerning the way in which he had spent his time in England. Dino answered his questions fully and clearly: he had nothing that he wished to hide. Even the Prior could not accuse him of a wish to excuse himself. He told the story of his interview with Hugo, of the dinner, of Hugo's attack upon him, and of his sojourn in the hospital, where Brian had sought him out and convinced him (without knowing that he was doing so) of his innocence with respect to Hugo's plot. Then came the story of his intercourse with Brian, his discovery that Brian's happiness hinged upon his love for Elizabeth Murray, and his attempts to unravel the very tangled skein of his friend's fortunes. Mr. Brett's opinion of the case, Brian's letter to Mrs. Luttrell, Dino's own visit to Scotland, with its varied effects, including the final destruction of the papers—all this was quietly and fully detailed, with an occasional interruption only from Padre Cristoforo in the shape of a question or a muttered comment. And when the whole story was told the Prior spoke.

Everything that Dino had done was, of course, wrong. He ought never to have seen Hugo, or dined with him: he ought to have gone to Father Connolly, the priest to whose care he had been recommended, as soon as he came out of hospital: he ought never to have interfered in Brian's love affairs, nor gone to Scotland, nor sought to impose conditions on Mrs. Luttrell, nor, in short, done any of the thousand and one things that he had done. As for the destruction of the papers, it was a point on which he (Father Cristoforo) hardly dared, he said, with a shrug of his shoulders, to touch. The base ingratitude, the unfaithfulness to the interests of the Church, the presumption, the pride, the wilfulness, manifested in that action, transcended all his powers of reprobation. The matter must be referred to a higher authority than his. And so forth. And every word he said was like a dagger planted in Dino's breast.

As for his desire to be a monk, the Prior repudiated the notion with contempt. Dino Vasari a monk, after this lapse from obedience and humility? He was not fit to do the humblest work of the lowest servant of those who lived by the altar. He had not even shown common penitence for his sin. Let him do that: let him humble himself: let him sit in dust and ashes, metaphorically speaking: and then, by-and-bye, the Church might open her arms to him, and listen to the voice of his prayer. But now—Father Cristoforo declined even to hear any formal confession: his pupil must wait and prepare himself, before he was fit for the sacrament of penance.

To Dino, this was a hard sentence. He did not know that the Prior was secretly much better satisfied with his submissive state of mind than he chose to allow, or that he had made up his mind to relax his severity on the morrow. Just for this one night the Prior had resolved to be stern and harsh. "I will make him eat dust," he said to himself, out of his real vexation and disappointment, as he looked vengefully at Dino, who was lying face downwards on the ground, weeping with all the self-abandonment of his nature. "He must never rebel again." The Prior knew that his measures were generally effectual: he meant to take strong ones now.

"There is something more in it that I can understand," he murmured to himself, presently, after he had taken a few turns up and down the room. He halted beside Dino's prostrate form, and looked down upon it with a hidden gentleness shining out of his deep-set eyes. But he would not speak gently. "You have not told me all," he said. "Rise: let me see your face."

Dino struggled to his knees, and, after a moment's hesitation, dropped his hands to his sides.

"What else have you to tell me?" said the priest, fixing his eyes on the young man's face, as if he could read the secrets of his soul.

"I have told you all that I did," stammered Dino.

"But not all that you thought."

There was a short silence. Then Dino spoke again, in short-broken sentences, which at times the Prior could scarcely hear.

"Reverend Father, there is one thought, one feeling. I do not know what it is. I am haunted by a face which never leaves me. And yet I saw it twice only: once in a picture and once in life; but it comes between me and my prayers. I cannot forget her."

"Whose face was this?" asked the Prior, with the subtle change of eye and lip which showed that Dino's answer had fulfilled his expectations. "Her name?"

But the name that Dino murmured was not one that Padre Cristoforo had expected to hear from him.

"Elizabeth Murray!" he repeated. "The woman that Brian Luttrell loves—for whose sake you gave up your inheritance—that you might not turn her out. The mystery is solved. I see the motive now. You love this woman."

"And if I have loved her, if I do love her," said Dino, passionately, his whole face lighting up with impetuous feeling, and his hands trembling as they clasped each other, "it is no sin to love."

The Prior gave him a long, steady gaze. "You have sacrificed your faith to your love," he said, "and that is a sin. You have forgotten your obedience to the Church for a woman's sake—and that is a sin. Lastly, you come here professing a monk's vocation, yet acknowledging—with reluctance—that this woman's face comes between you and your prayers. I do not say that this is a sin, but I say that you had better leave us to-morrow, for you have proved yourself unfit for the life that we lead at San Stefano. Go back to Scotland and marry. Or, if you cannot do that, we will give you money, and start you in some professional career; your aims are too low, your will is too weak, for us."

Again the Prior was not quite in earnest. He wanted to try the strength of his pupil's resolve. But when Dino said, "I will not leave you, I will tend the vines and the goats at your door, but I will never go away," the priest felt a revival of all the old tenderness which he had been used to lavish silently on the brown-eyed boy who had come to him from old Assunta.

"I will not go!" cried Dino. "I have no one in the world but you. Ah, my father, will you never forgive me?"

"It is not my forgiveness you need," said the Prior, shortly. "But come, the hour is late. We will give you shelter for the night, at least."

"Let me go to the chapel first," pleaded Dino, in a voice which had suddenly grown faint. "I dared not enter it this morning, but now let me pray there for a little while. I must ask forgiveness there."

"Pray there if you choose," said the Prior; "and pray for the penitence which you have yet to learn. When that is won, then talk of forgiveness."

He coldly withdrew the hand that Dino tried to kiss; he left the room without uttering one word of comfort or encouragement. It was good for his pupil, he thought, to be driven well-nigh to despair.

Dino, left to himself, remained for a few minutes in the posture in which the Prior had left him; then rose and made his way, slowly and feebly, to the little monastery chapel, where a solitary lamp swung before the altar, and a flood of moonlight fell through the coloured panes of the clerestory windows. Dino stood passive in that flood of moonlight, almost forgetting why he had come. His brain was dizzy, his heart was sick. His mind was distracted with the thought of a guilt which he did not feel to be his own, of sin for which his conscience did not smite him. For, with a strange commingling of clear-sightedness and submission to authority, he still believed that he had done perfectly right in giving up his claim to the Scotch estate, and yet, with all his heart, desired to feel that he had done wrong. And when the words with which Father Cristoforo had reproached him came back to his mind, his burden seemed greater than he could bear. With a moan of pain he sank down close beside the altar-steps. And there, through the midnight hours, he lay alone and wrestled with himself.

It was no use. Everything fell from him in that hour except that faith and that love which had been the controlling powers of his life. He had loved Brian as a brother; and he had done well: he had loved Elizabeth—though he had not known that the dreaming fancies which had lately centred round her deserved the name which the Prior had given to them—and he had not done ill; and it was right that he should give to them, what might, perhaps, avail to make their lives a little happier—at any rate all that he had to give. The Prior had said that he was wrong. And would the good God, whom he had always loved and worshipped from the days of his earliest boyhood, would the Good God condemn him, too! He did not think so. He was not sorry for what he had done at all.

No, he did not repent.

But how would it fare with him next day if he told the Prior this, the inmost conviction of his heart? He would be told again that he was not fit to be a monk. And the desire to be a monk—curious as it may seem to us—had grown up with Dino as a beautiful ideal. Was he now to be thrust out into the world—the world where men stole and lied and stabbed each other in the dark, all for the sake of a few acres of land or a handful of gold pieces—and denied the hard, ascetic, yet tranquil and finely-ordered life which he had hoped to lead, when he put on his monkish robe, for the remainder of his days?

Dino was an enthusiast: he might, perhaps, have been disenchanted if he had lived as one of themselves amongst the brethren who seemed to him so enviable; but just now his whole being rose in revolt against a decision which deprived him of all that he had been taught to consider blessed.

Then a strange revulsion of feeling came. There were good men in the world, he remembered, as well as bad: there were beautiful women; there was art, and music, and much that makes life seem worth living. Why, after all, if the monks rejected him, should he not go to the world and take his pleasure there like other men? And there came a vision of Elizabeth, with her pale face turned to him in pity, and her hand beckoning him to follow her. Then, after a little interval, he came to himself, and knew that his mind had wandered; and so, in order to steady his thoughts, he began to speak aloud, and a novice, who had been sent to say a certain number of prayers at that hour in church by way of penance, started from a fitful slumber on his knees, and heard the words that Dino said. They sounded strange to the young novice: he repeated them next day with a sense that he might be uttering blasphemy, and was very much astonished when the Prior drew his hand across his eyes as if to wipe away a tear, and did not seem horrified in the very least. And this was what Dino said:—

"Wrong! Wrong! All wrong! And yet it seemed right to love God's creatures.... Perhaps I loved them too much. So I am punished.... But, after all, He knows: He understands. If they put me out of His church, perhaps He will let me serve Him somewhere—somehow—I don't know where: He knows. Oh, my God, if I have loved another more than Thee, forgive me ... and let me rest ... for I am tired—tired—tired——"

The voice sank into an inarticulate murmur, in which the novice, frightened and perplexed, could not distinguish words. Then there was silence. One little sigh escaped those lips, and that was all. The novice turned and fled, terrified at those words of prayer, which seemed to him so different from any that he had ever heard—so different that they must be wrong!

At four in the morning the monks came in to chant their morning prayer. One by one they dropped into their places, scarcely noticing the prostrate figure before the altar-steps. It was usual enough for one of their number, or even a stranger staying in the monastery, to humiliate himself in that manner as a public penance. The Prior only gave a little start, as if an electric shock passed through his frame, when, on taking his seat in the choir, his eye fell upon that motionless form. But he did not leave his place until the last prayer had been said, the last psalm chanted. Then he rose and walked deliberately to the place where Dino lay, and laid his hand upon his head.

"My son!" he said, gently. There was a great fear in his face, a tremor of startled emotion in his voice. "Dino, my beloved! I pardon thee."

But Dino did not hear. His prayer had been granted him; he was at rest. God had been more merciful than man. The Prior's pardon came too late.

And far away, on a southern sea, where each great wave threatened to engulf the tiny boat which seemed like a child's toy thrown upon the waters, three men were struggling for dear life—for the life that Dino Vasari had been so ready to lay down—toiling, with broken oars, and roughly-fashioned sails, and ragged streamers as signals of distress, to win their way back to solid land, and live once more with their fellows the common but precious life of common men.

They had narrowly escaped death by fire, and were fast losing hope of ultimate rescue. For five days they had been tossing on the waves of the Southern Atlantic, and they had seen as yet no sign of land; no friendly sail bearing down upon them to bring relief. Their stock of food was scanty, the water supply had now entirely failed. The tortures of a raging thirst under a sultry sky had begun: the men's lips were black and swollen, their bloodshot eyes searched the horizon in anguished, fruitless yearning. There was no cloud in all the great expanse of blue: there was nothing to be seen between sea and sky but this one frail boat with its three occupants. Another and a larger boat had set out with them, but they had lost sight of it in the night. There had been five men in this little cockle-shell when they left the ship; but one of them had lost his senses and jumped over-board, drowning before their very eyes; and one, a mere lad, had died on the second day from injuries received on board the burning vessel. And of the three who were left, it seemed as if one, at least, would speedily succumb to the exposure and privations which they had been driven to endure.

This man lay prostrate at the bottom of the boat. He could hold out no longer. His half-closed eyes, his open mouth and swollen features showed the suffering which had brought him to this pass. Another man sat bowed together in a kind of torpor. A third, the oldest and most experienced of the party, kept his hand upon the tiller; but there was a sullen hopelessness in his air, a nerveless dejection in the pose of his limbs, which showed that he had neither strength nor inclination to fight much longer against fate.

It was at nine o'clock on the fifth day of their perilous voyage, that the steersman lifted up his eyes, and saw a faint trail of smoke on the horizon. He uttered a hoarse, inarticulate cry, and rose up, pointing with one shaking finger to the distant sign. "A steamer!" He could say nothing more, but the word was enough. It called back life even to the dull eyes of the man who had lain down to die. And he who was sitting with his head bowed wearily upon his knees, looked up with a quick, sudden flicker of hope which seemed likely enough to be extinguished as soon as it was evident.

For it was probable that the steamer would merely cross the line of vision and disappear, without approaching them near enough to be of any use. Eagerly they watched. They strained their eyes to see it: they spent their strength in rigging up a tattered garment or two to serve as a signal of distress. Then, they waited through hours of sickening, terrible suspense. And the steamer loomed into sight: nearer it came and nearer. They were upon its track: surely succour was nigh at hand.

And succour came. The great vessel slackened its pace: it came to a standstill and waited, heaving to and fro upon the waters, as if it were a live thing with a beating and compassionate heart. The two men in the boat, standing up and faintly endeavouring to raise their voices, saw that a great crowd of heads was turned towards them from the sides of the vessel, that a boat was lowered and pushed off. The plashing of oars, the sound of a cheer, came to the ears of the seafarers. The old sailor muttered something that sounded like "Thank God!" and his companion burst into tears, but the man at the bottom of the boat lay still: they had not been able to make him hear or understand. The officer in the boat from the steamer stood up as it approached, and to him the old man addressed himself as soon as he could speak.

"We're the second mate and bo'sun of the Falcon, sir, and one steerage passenger. Destroyed by fire five days ago; and we've been in this here cockle-shell ever since." But his voice was so husky and dry that he was almost unintelligible. "Mates, for the love of Heaven, give us summat to drink," cried the other man, as he was lifted into the boat. And in a few minutes they were speeding back to the steamer, and the sailors were trying to pour a few drops of brandy and water down the parched throat of the one man who seemed to be beyond speech and movement.

The mate was able to give a concise account of the perils of the last few days when he arrived on board the Arizona; but there was little to relate. The story of a fire, of a hurried escape, of the severance of the boats, and the agonies of thirst endured by the survivors had nothing in it that was particularly new. The captain dismissed the men good-humouredly to the care of cook and steward: it was only the steerage passenger who required to be put under the doctor's care. It seemed that he had been hurt by the falling of a spar, and severely scorched in trying to save a child who was in imminent danger; and, though he had at first been the most cheery and hopeful of the party, his strength had soon failed, and he had lain half or wholly unconscious for the greater part of the last two or three days.

There was one passenger on board the Arizona who listened to all these details with a keener interest than that shown by any other listener. He went down and talked to the men himself as soon as he had the chance and asked their names. One of the officers came with him, and paid an almost equally keen attention to the replies.

"Mine's Thomas Jackson, sir; and the bo'sun's name it is Fall—Andrew Fall. And the passenger, sir? Steerage he was: he was called Mackay."

"No, he warn't," said the boatswain, in a gruff tone. "Saving your presence, sir, his name was Smith."

"Mackay," said the mate, with equal positiveness. "And a fine fellow he was, too, and one of the best for cheering of us up with his stories and songs; and not above a bit of a prayer, too, when the worst came to the worst. I heard him myself."

"No sign of your friend here, Mr. Heron, I'm afraid," whispered the ship's officer.

"I am afraid not. Was there a passenger on board the Falcon called Stretton."

"No, sir. I'm sure o' that."

"Or—Luttrell?"

Percival Heron knew well enough that no such name had been found amongst the list of passengers; but he had a vague notion that Brian might have resumed his former appellation for some reason or other after he came on board. Thomas Jackson considered the subject for a few minutes.

"I ain't rightly sure, sir. Seems to me there was a gent of that name, or something like it, on board: but if so, he was amongst those in the other boat."

"I should like to see this man Mackay—or Smith," said Percival.

The berth in which the steerage passenger lay was pointed out to him: he looked at the face upon the pillow, and shook his head. A rough, reddened, blistered face it was, with dirt grained into the pores and matting the hair and beard: not in the least like the countenance of the man whom he had come to seek.

"We may fall in with the other boat," suggested the officer.

But though the steamer went out of her course in search of it, and a careful watch was kept throughout the day and night, the other boat could not be seen.