“I am bound to believe you, my father.”

“But you do not.  Your heart is going after this wicked man.”

“Oh, my father, I do not wish it should.  I never wish or expect to see him more.  I only pray for him that his soul may not be lost.”

“He has gone, then?”

“Yes, my father.  And he went with my uncle, a most holy monk, who has undertaken the work of his salvation.  He listens to my uncle, who has hopes of restoring him to the Church.”

“That is well.  And now, my daughter, listen to me.  You must root out of your thought every trace and remembrance of these words of sinful earthly love which he hath spoken.  Such love would burn your soul to all eternity with fire that never could be quenched.  If you can tear away all roots and traces of this from your heart, if by fasting and prayer and penance you can become worthy to be a bride of your divine Lord, then your prayers will gain power, and you may prevail to secure his eternal salvation.  But listen to me, daughter,—­listen and tremble!  If ever you should yield to his love and turn back from this heavenly marriage to follow him, you will accomplish his damnation and your own; to all eternity he will curse you, while the fire rages and consumes him,—­he will curse the hour that he first saw you.”

These words were spoken with an intense vehemence which seemed almost supernatural.  Agnes shivered and trembled; a vague feeling of guilt overwhelmed and disheartened her; she seemed to herself the most lost and abandoned of human beings.

“My father, I shall think no penance too severe that may restore my soul from this sin.  I have already made a vow to the blessed Mother that I will walk on foot to the Holy City, praying in every shrine and holy place; and I humbly ask your approval.”

This announcement brought to the mind of the monk a sense of relief and deliverance.  He felt already, in the terrible storm of agitation which this confession had aroused within him, that nature was not dead, and that he was infinitely farther from the victory of passionless calm than he had supposed.  He was still a man,—­torn with human passions, with a love which he must never express, and a jealousy which burned and writhed at every word which he had wrung from its unconscious object.  Conscience had begun to whisper in his ear that there would be no safety to him in continuing this spiritual dictatorship to one whose every word unmanned him,—­that it was laying himself open to a ceaseless temptation, which in some blinded, dreary hour of evil might hurry him into acts of horrible sacrilege; and he was once more feeling that wild, stormy revolt of his inner nature that so distressed him before he left the convent.

This proposition of Agnes’ struck him as a compromise.  It would take her from him only for a season, she would go under his care and direction, and he would gradually recover his calmness and self-possession in her absence.  Her pilgrimage to the holy places would be a most proper and fit preparation for the solemn marriage-rite which should forever sunder her from all human ties and make her inaccessible to all solicitations of human love.  Therefore, after an interval of silence, he answered,—­