Over and over the Prioress repeated these words; over and over she thanked our Lady for having vouchsafed so explicit a revelation.  Yet was she distressed that her inmost spirit failed to respond, acclaiming the words as divine.  She knew they must be divine, yet could not feel that they were so.

As dawn crept into the cell, she found herself repeating again and again “A sign, a sign!  Thy will was hid from me; yet I accept its revelation through this babe.  But I ask a sign which shall speak to mine own heart, also!  A sign, a sign!”

She rose and opened wide the casement, not of the oriel window, but of one to the right of the group of the Virgin and child, and near by it.

She was worn out both in mind and body, yet could not bring herself to leave the shrine or to seek her couch.

She remembered the example of that reverend and holy man, Bishop Wulstan.  She had lately been reading, in the Chronicles of Florence, the monk of Worcester, how “in his early life, when appointed to be chanter and treasurer of the Church, Wulstan embraced the opportunity of serving God with less restraint, giving himself up to a contemplative life, going into the church day and night to pray and read the Bible.  So devoted was he to sacred vigils that not only would he keep himself awake during the night, but day and night also; and when the urgency of nature at last compelled him to sleep, he did not pamper his limbs by resting on a bed or coverings, but would lie down for a short time on one of the benches of the Church, resting his head on the book which he had used for praying or reading.”

The Prioress chanced to have read this passage aloud, in the Refectory, two days before.

As she stood in the dawn light, overcome with sleep, yet unwilling to leave her vigil at the shrine, she remembered the example of this greatly revered Bishop of Worcester, “a man of great piety and dovelike simplicity, one beloved of God, and of the people whom he ruled in all things,” dead just over a hundred years, yet ever living in the memory of all.

So, remembering his example, the Prioress went to her table, and shutting the clasps of her treasured Gregorian Sacramentary, placed it on the floor before the shrine of the Virgin.

Then, flinging her cloak upon the ground, and a silk covering over the book, she sank down, stretched her weary limbs upon the cloak and laid her head on the Sacramentary, trusting that some of the many sacred prayers therein contained would pass into her mind while she slept.

Yet still her spirit cried:  “A sign, a sign!  However slight, however small; a sign mine own heart can understand.”

Whether she slept a few moments only or an hour, she could not tell.  Yet she felt strangely rested, when she was awakened by the sound of a most heavenly song outpoured.  It flooded her cell with liquid trills, as of little silver bells.