Immediately Lenore walked into the room, and men held their breath at sight of her. She was dressed as for a bridal, in robes of stiff, white damask, her mantle fastened at her throat with a silver pin, and her silver-woven wedding-veil falling over her from the filet that confined it. White as death itself she was, and staring straight before her, seeing nothing of the throng of onlookers. For a moment her eyes were blinded by the blaze of light. Then she started forward, to the body of her lord. When she entered, her two hands had been tightly clenched, and she had thought to restrain herself from any outbreak of grief before the people. But the living were forgotten now. Here before her was the face that she had loved so wofully, that she had hungered for so unspeakably. Here was he, the giver of her one brief hour of unutterable happiness; the cause of so many days and nights of tremulous woe. Here he lay, waiting not for her nor for anything, with no power to give her greeting when she came. Yet it was he; it was his face. “Gerault—Gerault—my lord!” she whispered softly, as if he slept: “Gerault!” She was beside him, and had taken one of the rigid hands in both her warm, living ones. “My lord, my beloved, wilt not turn thy face to me? I have waited long for thy kiss. Prithee, give but a little of thy love; _seem_ but to notice me, and I will be well content. Nay, but thou surely wilt! Surely, surely, beloved, thou wilt not pass me by!” She had been covering the hand she held with kisses, but now she put it from her, and looked down upon the passive body, her eyes wide and hurt, and her mouth tremulous with his repulse. The spectators watched this pitiable scene with fascinated awe; and it seemed not to occur to one of them to prevent what followed. None there realized that Lenore was unbalanced: that to her, Gerault was still alive. She bent over, and put her lips to his. Then, burned and tortured by the unresponsiveness of the clay, she laid herself down upon the bier and put her head in the hollow of Gerault’s neck, where it had been wont to rest. Now, at last, two of that watching company started forward to prevent a continuance of the scene. Courtoise and the Bishop went to her with one impulse; took her—monseigneur by the hands, Courtoise about the body; loosened her clasp upon the form of her dead husband, and drew her gently away from the bier. She, spent and shaken with her grief, made no resistance, but lay quietly back in their arms, trembling and weak. Thereupon both men looked helplessly toward Madame Eleanore, to know what should be done. She, strained almost to the point of breaking, came and stood over the form of Lenore and said to Courtoise,— [Illustration: _“Gerault—Gerault—my lord!” she whispered.—Page 275_ ] “She cannot remain here. ’Tis too terrible for her. Carry her up to her room, whither Alixe shall follow her. But I must remain here till the mass is said.”