her belief, in a more precious thing--her love. She complied with the
ordinances, but felt little of the inner beauty of her faith. The effort
she had made in withstanding her father's assault upon it had exhausted
her. Though she had had the strength to triumph, at the moment, a
partial and secret collapse was the price she had afterwards to pay.
Father Arlworth, who had a subtle understanding of human nature, noticed
that Domini was changed and slightly hardened by the tragedy she had
known, and was not surprised or shocked. Nor did he attempt to force
her character back into its former way of beauty. He knew that to do
so would be dangerous, that Domini's nature required peace in which to
become absolutely normal once again after the shock it had sustained.

When Domini was twenty-one he died, and her safest guide, the one who
understood her best, went from her. The years passed. She lived with her
embittered father; and drifted into the unthinking worldliness of the
life of her order. Her home was far from ideal. Yet she would not marry.
The wreck of her parents' domestic life had rendered her mistrustful of
human relations. She had seen something of the terror of love, and could
not, like other women, regard it as safety and as sweetness. So she put
it from her, and strove to fill her life with all those lesser things
which men and women grasp, as the Chinese grasp the opium pipe, those
things which lull our comprehension of realities to sleep.

When Lord Rens died, still blaspheming, and without any of the
consolations of religion, Domini felt the imperious need of change. She
did not grieve actively for the dead man. In his last years they had
been very far apart, and his death relieved her from the perpetual
contemplation of a tragedy. Lord Rens had grown to regard his daughter
almost with enmity in his enmity against her mother's religion, which
was hers. She had come to think of him rather with pity than with love.