And they loved their life as they had never loved it before.
One evening they went again to the canal and looked at the water, but they seemed to have lost their emotions before it. They were no longer afraid. Ferdinand sat on the parapet and Valentia leaned against him. He bent his head so that his face might touch her hair. She looked at him and smiled, and she almost lifted her lips. He kissed them.
'Do you love me, Ferdinand?'
He gave the answer without words.
Their faces were touching now, and he was holding her hands. They were both very happy.
'You know, Ferdinand,' she whispered, 'we are very foolish.'
'I don't care.'
'Monsieur Rollo said that folly was the chief attribute of man.'
'What did he say of love?'
'I forget.'
Then, after a pause, he whispered in her ear,--
'I love you!'
And she held up her lips to him again.
'After all,' she said, 'we're only human beings. We can't help it. I think--'
She hesitated; what she was going to say had something of the anti-climax in it.
'I think--it would be very silly if--if we threw ourselves in the horrid canal.'
'Valentia, do you mean--?'
She smiled charmingly as she answered,--
'What you will, Ferdinand.'
Again he took both her hands, and, bending down, kissed them.... But this time she lifted him up to her and kissed him on the lips.
VIII
One night after dinner I told this story to my aunt.
'But why on earth didn't they get married?' she asked, when I had finished.
'Good Heavens!' I cried. 'It never occurred to me.'
'Well, I think they ought,' she said.
'Oh, I have no doubt they did. I expect they got on their bikes and rode off to the Consulate at Amsterdam there and then. I'm sure it would have been his first thought.'
'Of course, some girls are very queer,' said my aunt.
FAITH
I
The moon shone fitfully through the clouds on to the weary face of Brother Jasper kneeling in his cell. His hands were fervently clasped, uplifted to the crucifix that hung on the bare wall, and he was praying, praying as he had never prayed before. All through the hours of night, while the monks were sleeping, Brother Jasper had been supplicating his God for light; but in his soul remained a darkness deeper than that of the blackest night. At last he heard the tinkling of the bell that called the monks to prayers, and with a groan lifted himself up. He opened his cell door and went out into the cloister. With down-turned face he walked along till he came to the chapel, and, reaching his seat, sank again heavily to his knees.
The lights in the chapel were few enough, for San Lucido was nearly the poorest monastery in Spain; a few dim candles on the altar threw long shadows on the pavement, and in the choir their yellow glare lit up uncouthly the pale faces of the monks. When Brother Jasper stood up, the taper at his back cast an unnatural light over him, like a halo, making his great black eyes shine strangely from their deep sockets, while below them the dark lines and the black shadow of his shaven chin gave him an unearthly weirdness. He looked like a living corpse standing in the brown Franciscan cowl--a dead monk doomed for some sin to wander through the earth till the day, the Day of Judgment; and in the agony of that weary face one could almost read the terrors of eternal death.
The monks recited the service with their heavy drone, and the sound of the harsh men's voices ascended to the vault, dragging along the roof. But Jasper heard not what they said; he rose and knelt as they did; he uttered the words; he walked out of the church in his turn, and through the cloister to his cell. And he threw himself on the floor and beat his head against the hard stones, weeping passionately. And he cried out,--
'What shall I do? What shall I do?'
For Brother Jasper did not believe.
II
Two days before, the monk, standing amid the stunted shrubs on the hill of San Lucido, had looked out on the arid plain before him. It was all brown and grey, the desolate ground strewn with huge granite boulders, treeless; and for the wretched sheep who fed there, thin and scanty grass; the shepherd, in his tattered cloak, sat on a rock, moodily, paying no heed to his flock, dully looking at the desert round him. Brother Jasper gazed at the scene as he had gazed for three years since he had come to San Lucido, filled with faith and great love for God. In those days he had thought nothing of the cold waste as his eyes rested on it; the light of heaven shed a wonderful glow on the scene, and when at sunset the heavy clouds were piled one above the other, like huge, fantastic mountains turned into golden fire, when he looked beyond them and saw the whole sky burning red and then a mass of yellow and gold, he could imagine that God was sitting there on His throne of fire, with Christ on His right hand in robes of light and glory, and Mary the Queen on His left. And above them the Dove with its outstretched wings, the white bird hovering in a sea of light! And it seemed so near! Brother Jasper felt in him almost the power to go there, to climb
