"I have been mad, father, crazed,—I know not what I have done! I dare not look upon thee, and tell thee! Let me arrange my flowers in thy chalice, while I speak," replied Stephania, hiding her face in the fragrant bundle.
"Not so!" replied the monk. "Eye and gesture often confess more than the apologizing lip! Kneel in thy wonted place! No other attitude becomes thy dignity or mine;—for either thou kneelest to the servant of God or thou debasest thyself before the brother of man!"
Stephania complied instantly, and Nilus, throwing himself back in his chair, fixed his eyes on the crucifix before him, without even glancing at the penitent.
"Father—you had warned me of all the ills that would befall," she began, almost inaudibly, "but I longed to see him at my feet,—and more,—much more!"
"What is all this?" said the monk turning very pale and glancing at his fair penitent with a degree of fierceness mingled with surprise.
"Ah! You know not what a woman feels,—when—when—" She paused, breathing hard.
"Hast thou then committed a deadly sin? Some dark adultery of the soul?" exclaimed Nilus. "Nay, daughter," he continued, as she shrank within herself at his words, "I speak too harshly now! But what more hast to say? Time wears—and this soft cheek should be upon the down, or its sweetness will not bloom as freshly as some of its rivals, at dawn. Thou see'st this hermitage, from which thou wouldst lure me, yields some recollections to brighten its desolation and gloom. What is it thou wouldst say?"
Stephania stared for a moment into the monk's face, at a loss to grasp his meaning. At last she stammered.
"Yet—I but intended to win him to—some silly tryst,—wherein I intended to deride his boyish passions."
"And he refused thy lures and thou art vexed to have escaped perdition?" said the monk, more mildly.