first painting the surface with the necessary mordant, or had run his
stilus through his most delicate miniature. But he made extraordinary
progress in the art; and the Prior more than once stepped into his
carrel and looked over his shoulder, watching the slender fingers with
the bone pen between them polishing the gold till it shone like a
mirror, or the steady lead pencil moving over the white page in
faultless curve. Then he would pat him on the shoulder, and go out in
approving silence.

* * * * *

Chris was supremely content that he had done right in asking for
profession. It appeared to him that he had found a life that was above
all others worthy of an immortal soul. The whole day's routine was
directed to one end, the performance of the _Opus Dei_, the uttering of
praises to Him who had made and was sustaining and would receive again
all things to Himself.

They rose at midnight for the night-office that the sleeping world might
not be wholly dumb to God; went to rest again; rose once more with the
world, and set about a yet sublimer worship. A stream of sacrifice
poured up to the Throne through the mellow summer morning, or the cold
winter darkness and gloom, from altar after altar in the great church.
Christopher remembered pleasantly a morning soon after the beginning of
his novitiate when he had been in the church as a set of priests came in
and began mass simultaneously; the mystical fancy suggested itself as
the hum of voices began that he was in a garden, warm and bright with
grace, and that bees were about him making honey--that fragrant
sweetness of which it had been said long ago that God should eat--and as
the tinkle of the Elevation sounded out here and there, it seemed to him