But as nuns count it?
And lovers?
A lifetime?
A night?
It had seemed indeed a lifetime to the Prioress of the White Ladies, during the first days of her return to the world.

But to the woman who now kneeled at the casement, drinking in the balmy sweetness of the summer night, looking with soft yearning eyes at the well-remembered landscape flooded in silvery moonlight, it seemed--a night.
A night--since she stood on the battlements, her lover's arms about her.
A night--since she said: "Thou wilt come back to me, Hugh.

.

.

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