the step of man had never been heard since the days of the Temple Knights. And as he went, pacing slowly to and fro in the religious solitudes, he saw nothing but the face above the Virgin's altar—the face of the woman on whose heart he had rested, from whose hand he had drunk the living waters of life, and yet who was lost to him—a stranger and untracked—in the wide wilderness of the world.
He stayed that night at Monastica.
The nuns were innocent as children, and though reluctant to receive a male guest, entertained him cheerfully, once admitted. He was reluctant to leave the place where at least one could speak to him of the woman whose memory was so dear, where at least her presence once had been, and still seemed to him to sanctify the very stones that she had trodden. Mother Veronica made him welcome with almost a mother's devotedness: this strong, fiery, lawless heathen, as she held him, had grown very dear to her, and having eased her conscience by warning him, she could no longer resist the temptation, so strong in a monotonous and one-idea'd life, of dwelling on the romance and mystery of the single episode which had broken the even tenor of her days. He listened over and over again to the same words, never wearying of them, for he was in love with his
