A sad departure, though daily and more than daily taken; for she who descended carried a weight of fear and anxiety.

As she came down the weary stairs, stage by stage, he saw the brightness die from eye and lip, and pale fear or dull despair seize on its place.

He saw--and his heart was full--the slender figure, the pallid face enter the room in which he stood--it might be at the dawning when the cold shadow of the night still lay on all, from the dead ashes on the hearth to the fallen pot and displaced bench; or it might be at mid-day, to meet sneers and taunts and ignoble looks; and his heart was full.

His face burned, his eyes filled, he could have kissed the floor she had walked over, the wooden spoon her hand had touched, the trencher-edge--done any foolish thing to prove his love.
Love?
It was a deeper thing than love, a holier, purer thing--that which he felt.

Such a feeling as the rough spearsmen of the Orleannais had for Joan the maid; or the great Florentine for the girl whom he saw for the first time at the banquet in the house of the Portinari; or as that man, who carried to his grave the Queen's glove, yet had never touched it with his bare hand.
Alas, that such feelings cannot last, nor such moments endure; that in the footsteps of the priest, be he never so holy, treads ever the grinning acolyte with his mind on sweet things.