He could follow their
daily round of prayer and work, and his heart was with them in both.
Bloodless and emaciated as he lay there, the life of love and war which
had once seemed to him the only one worth living, faded away into the
dimness of an undesired impossibility. He had failed, too, in his first
great deed of arms; his father's murderer was alive, and he himself had
most narrowly escaped death. It seemed to him that his thin white
hands, which could hardly pull the blanket to his chin when he felt
cold, could never again have strength to grasp sword-hilt or hold
bridle, and in the blank collapse of his physical existence the image
of himself as a monk, young, ascetic and holy in his life, presented
itself with a marvellous and luring attraction. He made the nursing
brother teach him prayers from the offices of the night and day, and he
repeated them at the right hours, feeling that he was taking a real
part in the monastic existence. Gradually, too, as he caught the spirit
of the place, the gospel of forgiveness, ever the stumbling-block of
fighting men, appeared to him as something that could be practised
without dishonour, and the determination to kill Sir Arnold gave way to
a sort of attempt at repentance for having even wished to be revenged
upon him.
One thing troubled him constantly and was altogether beyond his
comprehension. His mother seemed to have forgotten his very existence,
and he had not consciously seen her since he had been wounded.
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