Out of the Past — page 30: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Out of the Past 27 “How do you know?” asked Benedict, calmly. ‘Because I remember waking to hear her crying very softly, whispering your name over and over.” The priest was so still that Robert thought he could hear the flutter of each leaf above him. In the silence he watched a sorrowful change in Benedict’s face and saw with awe the moisture settle in the deep circles of his eyes. “Tf I had known it,” he murmured over and over, until Robert said, softly: “Yes, Pater; what then ?” “She never should have entered the convent. I never would have been priest. Ah, well,’ he muttered, after an uneasy, wandering look over the austere lines of the monastery, “‘life is like that. Your supremest happiness goes like a cloud fading into the sky. It never comes a second time. You must satisfy your soul with the second best and pray God for contentment.” The most painful impression Benedict produced upon Robert was the hopelessness of one whose possibilities had all been tested, the boundaries of whose life had been set like unseen walls, growing higher and thicker, but never expanding. He recognized faintly, against the hope of his young heart, that there would never be a wide completeness. For a moment he was ready to sac- CORMICLOOOKS.: