The black-robed brothers stood and listened, rebuked and dumb, turning their faces toward the glimmering wall of the chapel, and forgetting for a moment the fears which had agitated them, with their cause. What were all the potencies of the passionate earth, so easily diverted from good, against this royal dominion?
The evil-seeming spell was broken. A sudden movement, no sound but a stirring of the air, recalled their attention. The foliage of the acacia trembled as though a bird had taken wing. The bench was vacant, flowers strewed the ground before it, the presence had vanished. Her white feet or a breath of air had borne her away. The diapason of the organ drowned the sound her flight might have made; and the trees bent as though to bury in shadow her possible path. Emanuel made a long step forward.
“Woman or spirit, she is gone!” he cried, and stooped to see what trace of her those scattered roses might show. Anselmo grasped his companion’s sleeve.
“Do not touch them,” he entreated, glancing fearfully over his shoulder. “Who knows what spell is upon them?”
True, when found next morning, withered and scentless, these flowers appeared commonplace enough. Nor did there exist other proof that on this spot two brothers of the order had beheld a strange and dangerous vision. None the less was their sober account accepted implicitly by the brethren, of whom the wiser ever thereafter avoided to walk in the garden at the moon’s full; though certain of the more youthful were known to adventure themselves at that place and season.
It is not recorded that their daring and zeal met with any reward or recognition. Nor, perhaps, is this to be wondered at. For if any wandering spirit, coveting, yet not daring to enter the garden, had strayed near to the confining wall, it must have heard daily the solemn chant of the Church’s exorcism directed against all powers unholy; it must daily have beheld a slow procession of monks make the circuit of the shell-strewn paths, sprinkling the ground with holy-water to purify it from the contaminating touch of a woman’s foot. And if, spirit or woman, it were still undeterred, there was Angelo’s music at evening—like another flaming sword at the gate of this Eveless Eden!