“How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter! The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy two breasts are like two young roes. Thy neck is as a tower of ivory. The hair of thine head like purple; the king is held in the galleries. How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!”
She interrupted him, her voice high and a little shrill: “O mystical rose, O lily most admirable, O wondrous union; O St. Anna, Mother Immaculate, Demeter, Mother Beneficent, Lakshmi, Mother Most Shining; behold, I am his and he is yours and ye are mine!”
As he read on, his voice rose like a triumphant priest’s:
“I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof—”
That verse he never finished, for she swayed sideways as she knelt before the altar, and sank into his arms, her lips parted.
IV
They sat on the hilltop, looking down on noon in the valley, sleepily talking till he roused with: “Why won’t you marry me?”
“No. Not for years, anyway. I’m too old—thirty-two to your—what is it, twenty-eight or -nine? And I must be free for the service of Our Lord. . . . You do know I mean that? I am really consecrated, no matter what I may seem to do!”
“Sweet, of course I do! Oh, yes.”
“But not marry. It’s good at times to be just human, but mostly I have to live like a saint. . . . Besides, I do think men converts come in better if they know I’m not married.”