The Bishop drew forth and unfolded the letter from Rome, and very slowly, that each syllable might carry weight, he read it aloud.

As the gracious and kindly words fell upon the Prioress’s ear, commanding that no undue pressure should be brought to bear upon her, and insisting that it must be entirely by her own wish, if she resigned her office and availed herself of this dispensation from her vows, she felt humbled to the dust at thought of her own violence, and of the injustice of her angry words.

Her weeping became so heartbroken, that the Bishop again laid his left hand, with kindly comforting touch, upon her bowed head.

As he read the Pope’s most particular injunctions as to the manner in which she must leave the Nunnery and take her place in the world once more, so as to prevent any public scandal, she fell silent from sheer astonishment, holding her breath to listen to the final clause empowering the Bishop to announce within the Convent, when her absence became known, that she had been moved on by him, secretly, with the knowledge and approval of the Pope, to a place where she was required for higher service.

“Higher service,” said the Prioress, her face still hidden. “Higher service?  Can it be that the Holy Father really speaks of the return to earthly love and marriage, the pleasures of the world, and the joys of home life, as ’higher service’?”

The grief, the utter disillusion, the dismayed question in her tone, moved the Bishop to compunction.

“Mine was the phrase, to begin with, my daughter,” he admitted.  “I used it to the Holy Father, and I confess that, in using it, I did mean to convey that which, as you well know.  I have long believed, that wifehood and motherhood, if worthily performed, may rank higher in the Divine regard than vows of celibacy.  But, in adopting the expression, the Holy Father, we may rest assured, had no thought of undervaluing the monastic life, or the high position within it to which you have attained.  I should rather take it that he was merely accepting my assurance that the new vocation to which you were called would, in your particular case, be higher service.”

The Prioress, lifting her head, looked long into the Bishop’s face, without making reply.

Her eyes were drowned in tears; dark shadows lay beneath them.  Yet the light of a high resolve, unconquerable within her, shone through this veil of sorrow, as when the sun, behind it, breaks through the mist, victorious, chasing by its clear beams the baffling fog.

Seeing that look, the Bishop knew, of a sudden, that he had failed; that the Knight had failed; that the all-powerful pronouncement from the Vatican had failed.

The woman and her conscience held the field.

Having conquered her own love, having mastered her own natural yearning for her lover, she would overcome with ease all other assailants.