The Abduction

Father Murray called at the hotel two days later and inquired for Mr. Griffin. Mark was in his room and hastened down.

"I must apologize, Father," he began, "that you had to come for me. I should not have let such a thing happen. But I thought it best not to break in upon you after--" Mark stopped, deeply chagrined at having almost touched what must be a painful subject to the priest. "I--I--"

But Father Murray smiled indulgently.

"Don't, please, Mark. I am quite reconciled to that now. A few hours with my Imitation heals all such wounds. Why, I am beginning to know its comforts by heart, like that one I inflicted on you the other day. Here's my latest pet: 'What can be more free than he who desires nothing on earth?'"

"Fine--but a certain pagan was before your monk with that," said Mark. "Wasn't it Diogenes who, asked by Alexander the Great to name a favor the emperor could bestow upon him, asked His Majesty to step out of the sunlight? Surely he had all the philosophy of your quotation?"

"He had," smiled back the priest; "but, as Mrs. O'Leary has the religion which includes the best of philosophy, so our à Kempis had more than Diogenes. Philosophy is good to argue one into self-regulation; but religion is better, because it first secures the virtue and then makes you happy in it. 'Unless a man be at liberty from all things created, he cannot freely attend to the things divine.' It is the attending to things divine that really makes true liberty."