So he went." Her face still expressed incredulous astonishment.
"His name ?" she demanded, awaiting the answer with parted lips, and widely-open eyes.
"Father Gervaise," said the Knight.
He saw her slowly whiten, till scarce a vestige of colour remained.
For some minutes she spoke no word; both sat silent, Hugh ruefully facing his risks, and inclined to repent of his honesty.
At length: "And who told you this tale," she said; "this tale of the love of Father Gervaise for a young maid, half his age ?" "Symon of Worcester told it me, three nights ago." "How came the Bishop to know so strange and so secret a thing?
And knowing it, how came he to tell it to you ?" "He had it from Father Gervaise himself.

He told it to me, because his remembrance of the sacrifice made so long ago in order that the full completion of wifehood and motherhood might be thine, had always inclined him to a wistful regret over thy choice of the monastic life, with its resultant celibacy; leading him, from the first, to espouse and further my cause.

In wedding us to-day, methinks the Bishop felt he was at last securing the consummation of the noble renunciation made so long ago by Father Gervaise." With a growing dread at his heart, Hugh watched the increasing pallor of her face, the hard line of the lips which, but a few moments before, had parted in such gentle sweetness.
"Alas!" he exclaimed, "I should not have told thee! With my clumsy desire to keep nothing from thee, I have spoilt an hour which else might have been so perfect." "You did well to tell me, dear Knight of mine," she said, a ripple of tenderness passing across her stern face, as swiftly and gently as the breeze stirs a cornfield.

"Nor is there anything in this world so perfect as the truth.

If the truth opened an abyss which plunged me into hell, I would sooner know it, than attempt to enter Paradise across the flimsy fabric of a lie!" Her voice, as she uttered these words, had in it the ring which was wont to petrify wrong-doers of the feebler kind among her nuns.
"Dear Knight, had the Bishop not forestalled me when he named his palfrey, truly I might have found a fine new name for you! But now, I pray you of your kindness, leave me alone with my fallen image for a little space, that I may gather up the fragments and give them decent burial." With which her courage broke.