r knees, for she had by now fallen upon her knees
in prayer, that it might easily happen she would never in all her life
pray more. There was no escape for Mark without disturbing her, and he
sat breathless in the yew-tree, thinking that soon she must perceive his
glittering eye in the depths of the dark foliage as in passing a
hedgerow one may perceive the eye of a nested bird. From his position he
could see the images, and out of the spiritual agony of Esther kneeling
there, the force of which was communicated to himself, he watched them
close, scarcely able to believe that they would not stoop from their
pedestals and console the suppliant woman with benediction of those
stone hands now clasped aspiringly to God, themselves for centuries
suppliant like the woman at their feet. Mark could think of nothing
better to do than to turn his face from Esther's face and to say for her
many _Paternosters_ and _Aves_. At first he thought that he was praying
in a silence of nature; but presently the awkwardness of his position
began to affect his concentration, and he found that he was saying the
words mechanically, listening the while to the voices of birds. He
compelled his attention to the prayers; but the birds were too loud. The
_Paternosters_ and the _Aves_ were absorbed in their singing and
chirping and twittering, so that Mark gave up to them and wished for a
rosary to help his feeble attention. Yet could he have used a rosary
without falling out of the yew-tree? He took his hands from the bough
for a moment and nearly overbalanced. _Make not your rosary of yew
berries_, he found himself saying. Who wrote that? _Make not your rosary
of yew berries._ Why, of course, it was Keats. It was the first line of
the _Ode to Melancholy_. Esther was still kneeling out there in the
sunlight. And how did the poem continue? _Make not your rosary of yew
berries._ What was the second line? It was ridiculous to sit astride a
bough and say _Paternosters_ and _Aves_. He could not sit there much
longer. And then just as he was on the point of letting go he saw that
Esther had risen from her knees and that Will Starling was standing in
the doorway of the chapel looking at her, not speaking but waiting for
her to speak, while he wound a strand of ivy round his fingers and
unwound it again, and wound it round again until it broke and he was
saying:

"I thought we agreed after your last display here that you'd give this
cursed chapel the go by?