The sound of a closing door.
Slowly a key turned, grated in the lock, and was withdrawn.
Then—silence.
But at sound of the turning key, the woman in his arms shivered, the slow, cold shudder of a soul in pain; and suddenly he knew that in coming to him she had chosen that which now seemed to her the harder part.
With the first revulsion of feeling occasioned by this knowledge, came a strong impulse to put her from him, to leap down the stairway, force open the heavy door, thrust her into the passage leading to her Nunnery, and shut the door upon her; then go out himself into the world to seek, in one wild search, every possible form of sin and revelry.
But this ungoverned impulse lasted but for the moment in which his passionate joy, recoiling upon himself, struck him a blinding, a bewildering blow.
In ten seconds he had recovered. His arms tightened more securely around her.
She had come to him. Whatever complex emotions might now be stirring within her, this fact was beyond question. Also, she had come of her own free will. The foot which had dared to stamp upon the torn fragments of the Pope's mandate, had, with an equal courage, stepped aside from the way of convention and had brought her within the compass of his arms.
He could not put her from him. She was his to hold and keep. But she was his also to shield and guard; aye, to shield not from outward dangers only, but from anything in himself which might cause her pain or perplexity, thus making more difficult her noble act of self-surrender.
Words spoken by the Bishop, in the banqueting hall, came back to him with fuller significance.