which you would never have entered had
you known your lover was yours, and needing you. I ask you to keep
your plighted word to me, and to become my wife. If you refuse, I go,
returning not again. I leave you here, to kneel in peace, by night or
day, before the shrine of the Madonna. But--I bid you to remember, day
and night, that because of this which you have done, there can be no
Madonna in my home. No woman will ever sit beside my hearth, holding a
little child upon her knees.

"You leave to me the crucifix--heart broken, love betrayed; feet and
hands nailed to the wood of cruel circumstance; side pierced by spear
of treachery--lonely, forsaken. But you take from me all the best,
both in life and in religion; all that tells of love, of joy, of hope
for the years to come.

"Oh, my beloved, weigh it well! There are so many, with a true
vocation, serving Heaven in Convent and in Cloister. There is but one
woman in the whole world for me. In the sight of Heaven, nothing
divides us. Convent walls now stand between--but they were built by
man, not God. Vows of celibacy were not meant to sunder loving hearts.
Mora? . . . Come!"

The Prioress rose and faced him.

"I cannot come," she said. "That which I have taught to others, I must
myself perform. Hugh, I am dead to the world; and if I be dead to the
world, how can I live to you? Had I, in very deed, died and been
entombed, you would not have gone down into the vaults and forced my
resting-place, that you might look upon my face, clasp my cold hand,
and pour into deaf ears a tale of love. Yet that is what, by trick and
artifice, you now have done. You come to a dead woman, saying; 'Love
me, and be my wife.' She must, perforce, make answer: 'How shall I,
who am dead to the world, live any longer therein?' Take a wife from
among the Living, Hugh. Come not to seek a bride among the Dead."

"Mother of God!" exclaimed the Knight, "is this religion?"

He turned to the window, then to the door. "How can I go from here?"

The stifled horror in his voice chilled the very soul of the woman to
whom he spoke. She had, indeed at last made him to understand.

"I must get you hence unseen," she said. "I dare not pass you out by
the Convent gate. I fear me, you must go back the way you came; nor
can you go alone. We hold the key to unlock the door leading from our
passage into the Cathedral crypt. I will now send all the nuns to the
Refectory. Then I