heart? Also, respecting, yea,
approving your reasons for reticence, I would have let you depart not
suspecting my knowledge of that which you wished to conceal, were it
not that we must now face this fact together:--Since penning that
message of apparent finality, the Prioress has tried her wings."

A rush of bewildered joy flooded the face of the Knight.

"Reverend Father!" he said, "think you that means hope for me?"

Symon of Worcester considered this question carefully, sitting in his
favourite attitude, his lips compressed against his finger-tips.

At length; "I think it means just this," he said. "A conflict, in her,
between the mental and the physical; between reason and instinct;
thought and feeling. The calm, collected mind sent you that reasoned
message of final refusal. The sentient body, vibrant with bounding
life, instinctively prepares itself for the possibility of the ride
with you to Warwick. This gives equal balance to the scale. But a
third factor will be called in, finally to decide the matter. By that
she will abide; and neither you nor I, neither earth nor hell, neither
things past, things present, nor things to come, could avail to move
her."

"And that third factor?" questioned the Knight.

"Is the Spiritual," replied the Bishop, solemnly, with uplifted face.

"With that, there came over the Knight a sudden sense of compunction.
He began for the first time to see the matter as it must appear to the
Bishop and the nun. His own obstinate and determined self-seeking
shamed him.

"You have been very good to me, my lord," he said humbly. "You have
been most kind and most generous, when indeed you had just cause to be
angry."

The Bishop lowered his eyes from the rafters, and bent them in
questioning gaze upon Hugh d'Argent.

"Angry, my son? And wherefore should I be angry?"

"That I should have sought, and should still be seeking, to tempt the
Prioress to wrong-doing."

The Bishop's questioning gaze took on a brightness which almost became
the light of sublime contempt.

"_You_--tempt _her_?" he said. "Tempt her to wrong-doing! The man
lives not, who could succeed in that! She will not come to you unless
she knows it to be right to come, and believes it to be wrong to stay.
If I thought you were tempting her, think you I would stand aside and
watch the conflict? Nay! But I stand aside and wait while she--of
purer, clearer vision, and walking nearer Heaven than you or
I-