walls. Surely all could not submit willingly to such a crushing
captivity? Some must agonize and spend their strength unavailingly,
like birds beating their wings against the bars of a cage for freedom.
To the man who had roamed through all the continents of the world
this forced inactivity seemed appalling--stultifying. The hampering
of personal freedom, the forcing of independent minds into one
narrow prescribed channel that admitted of no individual expansion,
the waste of material and the fettering of intellects, that were
heaven-sent gifts to be put out to usury and not shrouded away in
a napkin, revolted him. The conventual system was to him a survival
of medievalism, a relic of the dark ages; the last refuge of the shirkers
of the world. The communities themselves, if he had thought of them
at all, had been regarded as a whole. He had never troubled to
consider them as composed of single individuals. Today he thought
of them as separate human beings and his intolerance increased. An
indefinite distaste never seriously considered seemed, during the few
moments in the bare waiting room, to have grown suddenly into
active dislike. He was wholly out of sympathy with his surroundings,
impatient of the necessity that brought him into contact with what he
would have chosen to avoid. He looked about with eyes grown hard
and contemptuous. The very building seemed to be the embodiment
of retrogression and blind superstition. He was filled with antagonism.
His face was grim and his figure drawn up stiffly to its full height
when the door opened to admit the Mother Superior. For a moment
she hesitated, a faint look of surprise coming into her face. And no
antagonism, however intolerant, could have braved her gentle dignity.
"It is--_Monsieur_ Craven?" she asked, a perceptible interrogation
in her soft voice.

She took the letters he gave her and read them carefully--pausing