"Monks?" Gilbert repeated the word with curiosity. "Are you one of those persons for whom it is necessary to explain everything?" asked Eleanor, still smiling and looking at him intently. "I think you must be half a monk yourself, for I heard you singing the psalms as sweetly as any convent scholar."
"Even if I were not half a monk, but one altogether, I should not wholly understand your Grace's speech;" Gilbert smiled, too, for he was immeasurably far from guessing what was in her mind.
"So I have thought, in all these weeks and days while we have been together."
Her eyes darkened as she looked at him, but his were clear and calm.
"Do you understand this?" she asked, and she laid her two hands upon his shoulders.
"What?" he asked in surprise.
"This," she said, very softly, drawing herself near to him by her hands.
Then he knew, and he would have straightened himself, but her hands sprang to meet each other round his neck, and her face was close to his. But the vision of his own sinful mother rose in her eyes to meet him.
She held him fast, and three times she kissed him before she would let him go.