Another period of restful silence, while she worked, and he watched her working.  Then he had remarked:  “My friends say I am never tired.”

And she had answered:  “They would speak more truly if they said that you are ever brave.”

It had amazed the Bishop to find himself thus understood.  Moreover he could scarce put on his biretta, so crowned was his head by the laurels of her praise.  Also this had been the only time when he had wondered whether the Prioress really believed Father Gervaise to be at the bottom of the ocean.  It is ever an astonishment to a man when the unerring intuition of a woman is brought to bear upon himself.

Now, in this hour of his overwhelming fatigue, he recalled that scene.  Closing his eyes on the distant view, and opening them upon the enchanted vistas of memory, he speedily saw that calm face, with its chastened expression of fine self-control, bending above the page she was illuminating.  He saw the severe lines of the wimple, the folds of the flowing veil, the delicate movement of the long fingers, and—­yes!—­resting upon her bosom the jewelled cross, sign of her high office.

Thus looking back, he vividly recalled the extraordinary restfulness of sitting there in silence, while she worked.  No words were needed.  Her very presence, and the fact that she knew him to be weary, rested him.

He looked again.  But now the folds of the wimple and veil were gone.  A golden circlet clasped the shining softness of her hair.

The Bishop opened tired eyes, and fixed them once again upon the landscape.

He supposed the long rides on two successive days had exhausted him physically; and the strain of securing and ensuring the safety and happiness of the woman who was dearer to him than life, had reacted now in a mental lassitude which seemed unable to rise up and face the prospect of the lonely years to come.

The thought of her as now with the Knight, did not cause him suffering.  His one anxiety was lest anything unforeseen should arise, to prevent the full fruition of their happiness.

He had never loved her as a man loves the woman he would wed;—­at least, if that side of his love had attempted to arise, it had instantly been throttled and flung back.

It seemed to him that, from the very beginning he had ever loved her as Saint Joseph must have loved the maiden intrusted to his keeping—­his, yet not his; called, in the inspired dream, “Mary, thy wife”; but so called only that he might have the right to guard and care for her—­she who was shrine of the Holiest, o’ershadowed by the power of the Highest; Mother of God, most blessed Virgin forever.

It seemed to the Bishop that his joy in watching over Mora, since his appointment to the See of Worcester, had been such as Saint Joseph could well have understood; and now he had accomplished the supreme thing; and, in so doing, had left himself desolate.