“Nothing.”
Aymery bent forward slightly, and looked into Grimbald’s face. For a moment they stared each other in the eyes as though asking and answering silent questions. Then Aymery seemed to understand.
“There has been some devil’s work here,” he said, and Grimbald told him Oswald’s tale, and showed where the hoof prints might be seen by daylight.
“God knows the rest!” he said, smoothing his beard.
But Aymery was kneeling, and praying to the cross of his sword.
CHAPTER XVI
Twilight had fallen, a twilight of blue mists and vague, mysterious distances. A young moon was in the sky, and in a thicket near Denise’s cell nightingales were singing. She was to offer herself at the high altar that night, to strip her body before God, St. Martin, and Our Lady, for Dom Silvius had so persuaded her, arguing that her chaste holiness would be the more miraculous when offered publicly to God. Denise had had no heart to determine for herself, and to withstand Dom Silvius’s arguments. Her womanhood stood mute and humbled, feeling that some subtle virtue had fled out of her, and left her without purpose. She had lost faith in her own genius; in the magic crystal of her heart she could no longer see visions. And like one very weary she was leaving her destiny in the hands of others, letting them think for her, and guide her as they pleased.
When the twilight had fallen Denise went out into the little grass close before the cell, a close that was shut in by a high thorn hedge. She carried with her a jar of water that Abbot Reginald had blessed, a napkin, a vial of perfumed oil, and a pure white shift and tunic, given by the devout. No one could see her there, and Denise stripped off her old clothes, washed her body from head to foot, dried it, and anointed it with oil.
Now the warmth of her bosom made the perfume of the oil rise up into her nostrils, and the perfume seemed to steal straight into Denise’s heart. The night was very still, save for the song of the nightingales. Dew had fallen on the grass, yet a sweet warmth rose out of the earth, a warmth that is rare in the month of May. There was the moon yonder, and far hills faint under a mysterious sky. And Denise who a moment ago had felt miserable and weary of soul, in one breath was blushing as red as a rose, her whole body quivering in the moonlight, her eyes full of some inward fire.
A call from the unknown had come to her, and her heart had answered it, and for the moment she stood transfigured. The night seemed magical, a-whisper with mystery. She felt that she must steal away into the sweet green gloom of the woods, taking all hazards, dreaming a great love. She stretched her arms above her head, so their white and anointed sheen caught the faint light of the moon. Then as a white flame leaps and falls again into the darkness, so Denise’s arms fell suddenly across her bosom. The warmth and the perfume had gone again, and she felt cold in body and in heart.