Meanwhile on the threshold of that dark cell stood Reginald the Abbot, shocked, unable to retain much store of anger. A shadowy something knelt there close to him. The very heart of Denise seemed under his feet.
“Lord, let me go,” was all that she could ask.
And again—
“Lord, let me go, away yonder, into the dark.”
Reginald looked down at her from the serene height of his abbacy.
“Daughter,” he said at last, with no sententiousness, “go, and God pity you. It is better that this should end. Yet, wait till the day comes. You would lose your way on a night such as this.”
“I will wait, lord,” she answered, utterly humble because of his kindness, and her own poignant shame.
When Abbot Reginald returned through the gate in the thorn hedge, Dom Silvius’s voice hissed at him out of the darkness, for the cold had sharpened a venomous tongue.
“The jade, has she confessed?”
Reginald was possessed by a sudden unchristian lust to smite Dom Silvius across the mouth.