cell was shut.

Standing motionless at the top of the Refectory steps, she could hear
the distant clatter of platters, the shuffling feet of the lay-sisters
as they carried the dishes to and from the kitchens; and, above it all,
the monotonous voice of Sister Mary Rebecca reading aloud to the nuns
while they supped.

Then the Prioress took down one of the crypt lanterns and lighted it.

* * * * * *

Meanwhile the Knight, left alone, stood for a few moments, as if
stunned.

He had played for a big stake and lost; yet he felt more unnerved by
the unexpected finality of his own acquiescence in defeat, than by the
firm refusal which had brought that defeat about.

It seemed to him, as he now stood alone, that suddenly he had realised
the extraordinary detachment wrought by years of cloistered life.
Aflame with love and longing he had come, seeking the Living among the
Dead. It would have been less bitter to have knelt beside her tomb,
knowing the heart forever still had, to the last, beat true with love
for him; knowing the dead arms, lying cold and stiff, had he come
sooner, would have been flung around him; knowing the lips, now silent
in death, living, would have called to him in tenderest greeting.

But this cold travesty of the radiant woman he had left, said: "Touch
me not," and bade him seek a wife elsewhere; he, who had remained
faithful to her, even when he had thought her faithless.

And yet, cold though she was, in her saintly aloofness, she was still
the woman he loved. Moreover she still had the noble carriage, the
rich womanly beauty, the look of vital, physical vigour, which marked
her out as meant by Nature to be the mother of brave sons and fair
daughters. Yet he must leave her--to this!

He looked round the room, noted the low archway leading to the sleeping
chamber, took a step toward it, then fell back as from a sanctuary;
marked the great table, covered with missals, parchments, and vellum.
It might well have been the cell of a learned monk, rather than the
chamber of the woman he loved. His eye, travelling round, fell upon
the Madonna and Child.

In the pure evening light there was a strangely arresting quality about
the marble group; something infinitely human in the brooding tenderness
of the Mother, as she bent over the smiling Babe. It spoke of home,
rather than of the cloister. It struck a chord in the heart of the
Knight, a chord which rang clear a