Upon which the Knight fell to meditating as to whether that which is higher always uplifts; whereas that which is lower tends to debase.  Certainly the upward look betokens hope and joy; while the downward casting of the eye, is sign of sorrow and despondency.

“Levavi oculos meos in montes”—­chanted the monks, in the choir above.

He certainly looked high when he lifted the eyes of his insistent desire to the Prioress of the White Ladies.  So high did he lift them, and so unattainable was she, that most men would say he might as well ask the silvery moon, sailing across the firmament, to come down and be his bride!

He had held her high, in her maiden loveliness and purity.  But now that he had found her, a noble woman, matured, ripened by sorrow rather than hardened, yet firm in her determination to die to the world, to deny self, crucify the flesh, and resist the Devil—­he felt indeed that she walked among the stars.

Yet he could not bring himself to regard her as unattainable.  It had ever been his firm belief that a man could win any woman upon whom he wholly set his heart—­always supposing that no other man had already won her.  And this woman had been his own betrothed, when treachery intervened and sundered them.  Yet that did not now count for much.

He had left a girl; he had come back to find a woman.  That woman had infinitely more to give; but it would be infinitely more difficult to persuade her to give it.

At the close of their interview in her cell, the day before, all hope had left him.  But later, as they paced together in the darkness, hope had revived.

The strange isolation in which they then found themselves—­between locked doors a mile apart, earth above, earth beneath, earth all around them, they two alone, entombed yet vividly conscious of glowing life—­had brought her nearer to him; and when at last the moment of parting arrived and again he faced it as final, there had come—­all unheralded—­the sudden wonder of her surrender.

True, she had afterwards withdrawn herself; true, she had sent him from her; true, he had gone, without a word.  But that was because no promise could have been so binding, as that silent embrace.

He had gone from her on the impulse of the sweetness of obeying instantly her slightest wish; buoyed up by the certainty that no Convent walls could long divide lips which had met and clung with such a passion of mutual need.

That evening when, after much adventure, he at length gained the streets of the city, he had trodden them with the mien of a victor.

That night he had slept as he had not slept since the hour when his whole life had been embittered by a lying letter and a traitorous tongue.

But morning, alas, had brought its doubts; noon, its dark uncertainties; and as the hour of Vespers drew near, he had realised, with the helpless misery of despair, that it was madness to expect the Prioress of the White Ladies to break her vows, leave her Nunnery, and fly with him to Warwick.