To listen would be
to yield to temptation. He would not see Maurice; he hardly permitted
himself to read his friend's letters. He answered these notes by fervid
appeals to the wanderer to return to the fold, to be reconciled with
the church, to take up again the priesthood he had discarded. Hard as
it was, he still strove for what he felt to be the other's lasting
good.
Lent ended, and the gladness of Easter came upon the land; the spring
showed traces of its secret presence by a thousand intangible and
delicate signs in sky, and air, and earth: there was everywhere a stir
and a quickening, a blitheness which belongs to the vernal season only.
Philip felt all these things by the growing sharpness of the contrast
between his mood and that of the world without. His melancholy and
unrest seemed to him to grow every day more intense and unbearable.
That Father Frontford did not more fully realize Philip's condition was
probably due to the near approach of the election. As the time for the
convention drew near, the supporters of the rival candidates redoubled
their exertions; there was hurrying to and fro, writing of letters and
continued consultation, all of which inevitably distracted the
attention of the Father.
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