"My sins are neither blacker nor whiter than they have always been," he said; "you know them all, my father."
"And you wish to leave us?" I cried.
He unclasped his hands and laid one on my knee. I was terrified at its purity, but his face was turned away, and he said nothing.
I had never heard the wood at that time of the evening so silent as it was then. It was the time when, as the lax monks say, the birds say mattins (but the strict observants call it compline), but there was neither mattins nor compline then in the green wood. It was all in a great hush, and the shadows from the trees fifty paces away had crept up and were at our feet.
Then he spoke again.
"Tell me what your soul tells you," he said.
I put my hand on his brown head; I could not speak. Then he rose at once, and stood smiling and looking on me, and the sunlight made a splendour in his hair, as it were his heavenly crown.
"Thank you, my father," he said, though I had not spoken one word.
Then he turned and went into the hut, and left me to look upon the green woods through my tears, and to listen to a mavis that had begun to sing in one of the may-trees. I knew he was gone to make ready.
* * * * *