Ah! . . .  That was it!  The destroyer of fair bloom and blossom, of buds of promise; of the loveliness of a tended garden. . . .  Was this then what he seemed to Mora?  He, who had forced her to yield to the insistence of his love? . . .  In her chaste Convent cell, she could have remained true to this Ideal love of her girlhood:  and, now that she knew it to have been called forth by love, could have received, mentally, its full fruition.  Also, in time she might have discovered the identity of the Bishop with Father Gervaise, and long years of perfect friendship might have proved a solace to their sundered hearts, had not he—­the trampler upon flower-beds—­rudely intervened.

And yet—­Mora had been betrothed to him, her love had been his, long after Father Gervaise had left the land.

How could he win her back to be once more as she was when they parted on the castle battlements eight years before?

How could he free himself, and her, from these intangible, ecclesiastical entanglements?

He was reminded of his difficulties when he tried to walk disguised in the dress of the White Ladies, and found his stride impeded by those trailing garments.  He remembered the relief of wrenching them off, and stepping clear.

Why not now take the short, quick road to mastery?

But instantly that love which seeketh not its own, the strange new sense so recently awakened in him, laid its calm touch upon his throbbing heart.  Until that moment in the crypt the day before, he had loved Mora for his own delight, sought her for his own joy.  Now, he knew that he could take no happiness at the cost of one pang to her.

“She must be taught not to shudder,” cried the masterfulness which was his by nature.

“She must be given no cause to shudder,” amended this new, loyal tenderness, which now ruled his every thought of her.

Presently, returning to the arbour, he found her seated, her elbows on the table, her chin cupped in her hands.

She had been weeping; yet her smile of welcome, as he entered, held a quality he had scarce expected.

He spoke straight to the point.  It seemed the only way to step clear of immeshing trammels.

“Mora, it cuts me to the heart that, in striving to be honest with you, I have all unwittingly trampled upon those flower-beds in which you long had tended fair blossoms of memory.  Also I fear this knowledge of a nobler love, makes it hard for you to contemplate life linked to a love which seems to you less able for self-sacrifice.”

She gazed at him, wide-eyed, in sheer amazement.

“Dear Knight,” she said, “true, I am disillusioned, but not in aught that concerns you.  You trampled on no flower-beds of mine.  My shattered idol is the image of one whom I, with deepest reverence, loved, as a nun might love her Guardian Angel.  To learn that he loved me as a man loves a woman, and that he had to flee before that love, lest it should harm me and himself, changes the hallowed memory of years.  This morning, three names stood to me for all that is highest, noblest, best:  Father Gervaise, Symon of Worcester, and Hugh d’Argent.  Now, the Bishop and yourself alone are left.  Fail me not, Hugh, or I shall be bereft indeed.”