“It is Dom Silvius?” she asked at last, and her voice sounded steady and even tame.
Silvius folded his hands together, and raised his eyes to the level of Denise’s knees.
“You may remember, my Sister, how I said that I might ride this way again.”
She was silent, as though absorbed by some memory that pervaded all her consciousness. Silvius’s eyes climbed a little higher and rested upon her bosom.
“We did not agree then, Sancta Denise. It may be that you still love the life in the wilderness. The winter is past with us, for which God be thanked; you will have summer here, and the woods are pleasant in summer. Perhaps you have your birds to feed. The fruit promises well. I am never one for importunities.”
He spoke like a man who had rushed too quickly towards the point aimed at, and who covered up his retreat with irrelevancies. For Dom Silvius felt that his wisdom had slipped for the once, and that he should have begun with a digression. Women like love tokens hidden in a posy of flowers, and passion pledged in a song. But Denise’s directness saved Silvius from tracking her whims through a maze.
“Your words have been with me,” she said.
Her voice surprised him, so much so that he looked up sharply into her face. The hood was drawn, but an immovable mute pallor, a kind of deadness, struck on Silvius’s eyes like the whiteness of a whitened wall.
“I am not unthankful for that, Sister.”
“And you are of the same mind?”