A rush of bewildered joy flooded the face of the Knight.

“Reverend Father!” he said, “think you that means hope for me?”

Symon of Worcester considered this question carefully, sitting in his favourite attitude, his lips compressed against his finger-tips.

At length; “I think it means just this,” he said.  “A conflict, in her, between the mental and the physical; between reason and instinct; thought and feeling.  The calm, collected mind sent you that reasoned message of final refusal.  The sentient body, vibrant with bounding life, instinctively prepares itself for the possibility of the ride with you to Warwick.  This gives equal balance to the scale.  But a third factor will be called in, finally to decide the matter.  By that she will abide; and neither you nor I, neither earth nor hell, neither things past, things present, nor things to come, could avail to move her.”

“And that third factor?” questioned the Knight.

“Is the Spiritual,” replied the Bishop, solemnly, with uplifted face.

“With that, there came over the Knight a sudden sense of compunction.  He began for the first time to see the matter as it must appear to the Bishop and the nun.  His own obstinate and determined self-seeking shamed him.

“You have been very good to me, my lord,” he said humbly.  “You have been most kind and most generous, when indeed you had just cause to be angry.”

The Bishop lowered his eyes from the rafters, and bent them in questioning gaze upon Hugh d’Argent.

“Angry, my son?  And wherefore should I be angry?”

“That I should have sought, and should still be seeking, to tempt the Prioress to wrong-doing.”

The Bishop’s questioning gaze took on a brightness which almost became the light of sublime contempt.

“You—­tempt her?” he said.  “Tempt her to wrong-doing!  The man lives not, who could succeed in that!  She will not come to you unless she knows it to be right to come, and believes it to be wrong to stay.  If I thought you were tempting her, think you I would stand aside and watch the conflict?  Nay!  But I stand aside and wait while she—­of purer, clearer vision, and walking nearer Heaven than you or I—­discerns the right, and, choosing it, rejects the wrong.  Should she be satisfied that life with you is indeed God’s will for her—­and I tell you honestly, it will take a miracle to bring this about—­she will come to you.  But she will not come to you unless, in so doing, she is choosing what to her is the harder part.”

“The harder part!” exclaimed the Knight.  “You forget, my lord, she loves me.”