Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/318

Rh With an effort which cost him far inore than any physical toil or bodily strain could have ever done, he forced himself into the part it was imperative to play. Lie he would not, not even for her; and reserve, he saw, would confirm all the doubts rising in the breasts of his gaolers and auditors; he cast himself into a bolder venture. "These men," he reckoned, with a swift glance over them, "must be of two classes only—those who have forsaken the world, and those who have never known it; to hear of it will enchain equally those for whom it is a lost land and those to whom it is an unknown one." On that rapid inference he acted. In answer to the Superior's questions he told his life frankly; changing it in little, save that they deemed his travel had been the travel of a restles, bohemian—a man poor enough to have been glad at times to serve before the mast.

Though he was averse to many words usually, he could speak with a vivid and impressive eloquence when the fire of it was struck alight in him. He forced himself to speak so here. He answered, as one who would tell his adventures, without pressure or comment; and after the brevity of his previous curt replies, the monks heard the picturesque flow of his swift Italian with the same