beneath flickering against his feet. But Christopher's eyes soon came
back to the centre, beyond the screen, where a row of blackness on
either side in the stalls, marked where the monks rested back, and where
he would soon be resting with them. There were candles lighted at sparse
intervals along the book-rests, that shone up into the faces bent down
over the wide pages beneath; and beyond all rose the altar with two
steady flames crowning it against the shining halpas behind that cut it
off from the four groups of slender carved columns that divided the five
chapels at the extreme east. Half-a-dozen figures sat about the nave,
and Christopher noticed an old man, his white hair falling to his
shoulders, two seats in front, beginning to nod gently with sleep as the
soft heavy waves of melody poured down, lulling him.

He began now to catch the words, as his ears grew accustomed to the
sound, and he, too, sat back to listen.

"_Fiat pax in virtute tua: et abundantia in turribus tuis;" "Propter
fratres meos et proximos meos_:" came back the answer, "_loquebar pacem
de te_." And once more: "_Propter domum Domini Dei nostri: quaesivi bona
tibi_."

Then there was a soft clattering roar as the monks rose to their feet,
and in double volume from the bent heads sounded out the _Gloria Patri_.

It was overwhelming to the young man to hear the melodious tumult of
praise, and to remember that in less than a week he would be standing
there among the novices and adding his voice. It seemed to him as if he
had already come into the heart of life that he had felt pulsating round
him as he swam in the starlight a month before. It was this that was
reality, and the rest illusion. Here was the end for which man was made,