"You?" she said. "You! The priest who is to wed us? You!"
He stood his ground, awaiting her approach.
"Yes, I," he said; "I."
Half-way across the hall, she paused.
"No," she said, as if to herself. "I dream. It is not Father
Gervaise. It is the Bishop."
She drew nearer.
Earnestly he looked upon her, striving to see in her the Prioress of
Whytstone—the friend of all these happy, peaceful, blessèd years.
But the Prioress had vanished.
Mora de Norelle stood before him, taller by half a head than he, flushed by long galloping in the night breeze; nerves strung to breaking point; eyes bright with the great unrest of a headlong leap into a new world. Yet the firm sweet lips were there, unchanged; and, even as he marked them, they quivered and parted.
"Reverend Father," she said, "I have chosen, even as you prayed I might do, the harder part." She flung aside the riding-whip she carried; and folding her hands, held them up before him. "For Christ's sake, my Lord Bishop, pray for me!"