Lily did not cry.  Her indignation was vented in broken phrases, the meaning of which she did not seem to realize, and so jarred and shaken were her nerves that without being aware of it her talk branched into observations on her mother, her home life, the convent, and the disappointments of childhood.  So incoherently did she speak that for a moment Mike feared her brain was affected, and his efforts to lead her to speak of the present were fruitless.  But suddenly, waxing calm, her inner nature shining through the eyes like light through porcelain, she said—­

“I was wrong to come here, but I imagined men different.  We know so little of the world in the convent....  Ah, I should have stayed there.  It may be but a poor delusion, but it is better than such wickedness.”

“But I love you.”

“Love me! ...  You say you have sought love; we find love in contemplation and desire of higher things.  I am wanting in experience, but I know that love lives in thought, and not in violent passion; I know that a look from the loved one on entering a room, a touch of a hand at most will suffice, and I should have been satisfied to have seen your windows, and I should have gone away, my heart stored with impressions of you, and I should have been happy for weeks in the secret possession of such memories.  So I have always understood love; so we understood love in the convent.”

They were standing face to face in the faint twilight and scent of the bedroom.  Through the gauze blind the river floated past, decorative and grand; the great hay-boats rose above the wharfs and steamers; one lay in the sun’s silver casting a black shadow; a barge rowed by one man drifted round and round in the tide.

“When I knelt in the choir I lifted my heart to the saint I loved.  How far was He from me?  Millions of miles!—­and yet He was very near.  I dreamed of meeting Him in heaven, of seeing Him come robed in white with a palm in His hand, and then in a little darkness and dimness I felt Him take me to His breast.  I loved to read of the miracles He performed, and one night I dreamed I saw Him in my cell—­or was it you?”

All anger was gone from her face, and it reflected the play of her fancy.  “I used to pray to you to come down and speak to me.”

“And now,” said Mike, smiling, “now that I have come to you, now that I call you, now that I hold my arms to you—­you the bride-elect—­now that the hour has come, shall I not possess you?”

“Do you think you can gain love by clasping me to your bosom?  My love, though separated from me by a million miles, is nearer to me than yours has ever been.”

“Did you not speak of me as the lover of your prayer, and you said that in ecstasy the nuns—­and indeed it must be so—­exchange a gibbeted saint for some ideal man?  Give yourself; make this afternoon memorable.”

“No; good-bye!  Remember your promises.  Come; I am going.”