She trembled, wavered; then fled to the shrine of the Virgin, kneeling with hands outstretched.
"Holy Mother of God," she sobbed, "teach him that I dare not do this thing! Shew him that I cannot break my vows. Help him to understand that I would not, if I could."
He followed, and kneeled beside her; his proud head bent; his voice breaking with emotion.
"Blessèd Virgin," he said. "Thou who didst dwell in the earthly home at Nazareth, help this woman of mine to understand, that if she break her troth to me, holding herself from me, now when I am come to claim her, she sends me forth to an empty life, to a hearth beside which no woman will sit, to a home forever desolate."
Together they knelt, before the tender image of Mother and Child; together, yet apart; he, loyally mindful not so much as to brush against a fold of her veil.
The dark face, and the fair, were lifted, side by side, as they knelt before the Madonna. For a while so motionless they kneeled, they might have been finely-modelled figures; he, bronze; she, marble.
Then, with a sudden movement, she put out her right hand, and caught his left.
Firmly his fingers closed over hers; but he drew no nearer.
Yet as they knelt thus with clasped hands, his pulsing life seemed to flow through her, undoing, in one wild, sweet moment, the work of years of fast and vigil.
"Ah, Hugh," she cried, suddenly, "spare me! Spare me! Tempt me not!"