Had that ride upon Icon set her free from trammels in which she had been hitherto immeshed?

As she reached him, he took both her hands, so that she should not kneel.

"Already I have been received with obeisance, my daughter," he said; and told her of old Mary Antony's quaint little figure, standing to do the honours in the doorway.

The Prioress, at this, laughed gaily, and in her turn told the Bishop of the scene, on this very spot, when old Antony displayed her peas to the robin.

"What peas?" asked the Bishop; and so heard the whole story of the twenty-five peas and the daily counting, and of the identifying of certain of the peas with various members of the Community. "And a large, white pea, chosen for its fine aspect, was myself," said the Prioress; "and, leaving the Sub-Prioress and Sister Mary Rebecca, Master Robin swooped down and flew off with me! Hearing cries of distress, I hastened hither, to find Mary Antony denouncing the robin as 'Knight of the b.l.o.o.d.y Vest,' and making loud lamentations over my abduction. Her imaginings become more real to her than realities."

"She hath a faithful heart," said the Bishop, "and a shrewd wit."

"Faithful? Aye," said the Prioress, "faithful and loving. Yet it is but lately I have realised, the love, beneath her carefulness and devotion." The Prioress bent her level brows, looking away to the overhanging branches of the Pieman's tree. "How quickly, in these places, we lose the very remembrance of the meaning of personal, human love. We grow so soon accustomed to allowing ourselves to dwell only upon the abstract or the divine."

"That is a loss," said the Bishop. He turned and began to pace slowly toward the cloister; "a grievous loss, my daughter. Sooner than that you should suffer that loss, beyond repair, I would let the daring Knight of the b.l.o.o.d.y Vest carry you off on swift wing. Better a robin's nest, if, love be there, than a nunnery full of dead hearts."

He heard the quick catch of her breath, but gave her no chance to speak.

"'And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three,'" quoted the Bishop; "'but the greatest of these is love.'"

They were moving through the cloisters. The Prioress turned in the doorway, pausing that the Bishop might pa.s.s in before her.

"This, my lord," she said, with a fine sweep of her arm, "is the abode of Faith and Hope, and also of that divine Love, which excelleth both Hope and Faith."

"Nay," said the Bishop, "I pray you, listen. 'Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly; seeketh not her own; is not easily provoked, thinking no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth.' Methinks," said the Bishop, in a tone of gentle meditation, as he entered the Prioress's cell, "the apostle was speaking of a most human love; yet he rated it higher than faith and hope."

"Are you still dwelling upon Sister Mary Seraphine, my lord?" inquired the Prioress, and in her voice he heard the sound of a gathering storm.

"Nay, my dear Prioress," said the Bishop, seating himself in the Spanish chair, and laying his biretta upon the table near by; "I speak not of self-love, nor does the apostle whose words I quote. I take it, he writes of human love, sanctified; upborne by faith and hope, yet greater than either; just as a bird is greater than its wings, yet cannot mount without them. We must have faith, we must have hope; then our poor earthly loves can rise from the lower level of self-seeking and self-pleasing and take their place among those things that are eternal."

The Prioress had placed her chair opposite the Bishop. She was very pale, and her lips trembled. She made so great an effort to speak with calmness, that her voice sounded stern and hard.

"Why this talk of earthly loves, my Lord Bishop, in a place where all earthly love has been renounced and forgotten?"

The Bishop, seeing those trembling lips, ignored the hard tones, and answered, very tenderly, with a simple directness which scorned all evasion:

"Because, my daughter, I am here to plead for Hugh."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE WOMAN AND HER CONSCIENCE

"For Hugh?" said the Prioress. And then again, in low tones of incredulous amazement, "For Hugh! What know you of Hugh, my lord?"

The Bishop looked steadfastly at the Prioress, and replied with exceeding gravity and earnestness:

"I know that in breaking your solemn troth to him, you are breaking a very n.o.ble heart; and that in leaving his home desolate, you are robbing him not only of his happiness but also of his faith. Men are apt to rate our holy religion, not by its theories, but by the way in which it causeth us to act in our dealings with them. If you condemn Hugh to sit beside his hearth, through the long years, a lonely, childless man, you take the Madonna from his home; if you take your love from him, I greatly fear lest you should also rob him of his belief in the love of G.o.d. I do not say that these things should be so; I say that we must face the fact that thus they are. And remember--between a man and woman of n.o.ble birth, each with a stainless escutcheon, each believing the other to be the soul of honour, a broken troth is no light matter."

"I did not break my troth," said the Prioress, "until I believed that Hugh had broken his. I had suffered sore anguish of heart and humiliation of spirit, over the news of his marriage with his cousin Alfrida, ere I resolved to renounce the world and enter the cloister."

"But Hugh did not wed his cousin, nor any other woman," said the Bishop. "He was true to you in every thought and act, even after he also had pa.s.sed through sore anguish of heart by reason of your supposed marriage with another suitor."

"I learned the truth but a few days since," said the Prioress. "For seven long years I thought Hugh false to me. For seven long years I believed him the husband of another woman, and schooled myself to forget every memory of past tenderness."

"You were both deceived," said the Bishop. "You have both pa.s.sed through deep waters. You each owe it to the other to make all possible reparation."

"For seven holy years," said the Prioress, firmly, "I have been the bride of Christ."

"Do you love Hugh?" asked the Bishop.

There was silence in the chamber.

The Prioress desired, most fervently, to take her stand as one dead to all earthly loves and desires. Yet each time she opened her lips to reply, a fresh picture appeared in the mirror of her mental vision, and closed them.

She saw herself, with hand outstretched, clasping Hugh's as they kneeled together before the shrine of the Madonna. She could feel the rush of pulsing life flow from his hand to the palm of hers, and so upward to her poor numbed heart, making it beat its wings like a caged bird.

She felt again the strength and comfort of the strong arm on which she leaned, as slowly through the darkness she and Hugh paced in silence, side by side.

She remembered each time when obedience had seemed strangely sweet, and she had loved the manly abruptness of his commands.

She saw Hugh, in the ring of yellow light cast by the lantern, kneeling at her feet. She felt his hair, thick and soft, between her fingers.

And then--she remembered that shuddering sob, and the instant breaking down of every barrier. He was hers, to comfort; she was his, to soothe his pain. Then--the exquisite moment of yielding; the relief of the clasp of his strong arms; the pa.s.sing away of the suffering of long years, as she felt his lips on hers, and surrendered to the hunger of his kiss.

Then--one last picture--when loyal to her wish, felt rather than expressed, he had freed her, and pa.s.sed, without further word or touch, up into that dim grey light like a pearly dawn at sea--pa.s.sed, and been lost to view; she saw herself left in utter loneliness, the heavy door locked by her own turning of the key, he on one side, she on the other, for ever; she saw herself lying beneath the ground, in darkness and desolation, her face in the damp dust where his feet had stood.

"Do you love Hugh?" again demanded the Bishop.

And the Prioress lifted eyes full of suffering, reproach, and pain, but also full of courage and truth, to his face, and answered simply: "Alas, my lord, I do."

The silence thereafter following was tense with conflict. The Bishop turned his eyes to the figure of the Redeemer upon the cross, self-sacrifice personified, while the Prioress mastered her emotion.

Then: "'Love never faileth,'" said the Bishop gently.

But the Prioress had regained command over herself, and the gentle words were to her a challenge. She donned, forthwith, the breastplate of holy resolve, and drew her sword.

"My Lord Bishop, you have wrung from me a confession of my love; but in so doing, you have wrung from me a confession of sin. A nun may not yield to such love as Hugh d'Argent still desires to win from me. With long hours of prayer and vigil, have I sought to purge my soul from the stain of a weak yielding--even for 'a moment'--to the masterful insistence of this man, who forced himself, by the subterfuge of a sacrilegious masquerade, into the sacred precincts of our Nunnery. I know not whom he bribed"--continued the Prioress, flashing an indignant glance of suspicion at the Bishop.

"'Love thinking no evil,'" murmured Symon of Worcester.

"But I do know, that somebody in high authority must have connived at his plotting, or he could not have found himself alone in the crypt at the hour of Vespers, in such wise as to a.s.sume our dress and, mingling with the returning procession, gain entrance to the cloisters. And somebody must still be aiding and abetting his plans, or he could not be, as he himself told me he would be, daily in the crypt alone, during the hour when we pa.s.s to and from the clerestory. It angers me, my lord, to think that one who should, in this, be on my side, taketh part against me."

"'Is not easily provoked,'" quoted the Bishop.

"In fact I am tempted, my lord," said the Prioress, rising to her feet, tall and indignant, "I am almost tempted, my Lord Bishop, to forget the reverence which I owe to your high office----"