He went from out the autumn sunshine into the dusk of the huge interior. An altar-lamp burned, a star, and light in long shafts fell from the jewel-hued windows. The pillars soared and upheld the glorious roof, and all beneath was rich, dim and solemn. A few figures knelt or stood in nave or aisle. Garin moved to where he could see the columns brought by Gaucelm of the Star from the land beyond the sea and set before the chapel of Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne. He knelt, then, crossing himself, rose and took his seat at the base of a great supporting pillar. He rested his arm upon his knee, his chin upon his hand, and studied the pavement. He had not passed the columns and knelt before the Virgin of Roche-de-Frêne, because in his heart was an impulse of hostility. He did not name it, made haste to force it into limbo, hastened to bow his head and murmur an _Ave Maria_. Nevertheless it had made itself felt. This was the gemmed, azure-clad Queen who wanted marriage between Montmaure and the Princess of Roche-de-Frêne!... But doubtless it was not she—Father Eustace had slandered her—a lying monk, Heaven knew, was no such rarity! Garin came back into her court, but still he did not kneel, and, stretching his arms to her, beg her favour and some sign thereof, as he had done eight years ago. He was a graver man now, a deeper poet. An inner strife racked him, sitting there at the base of the pillar, emotion divided against itself, a mind bewildered between irreconcilables, a spirit abashed before its own inconstancy. One moment it was abashed, the very next it cried, “_But I am constant!_” Then came mere aching effort to bring old order out of this pulsing chaos, and then, that slipping, an unreasoning, blind and deaf, poignant and rich, half bliss, half pain—emotions so fused that there was no separating them, no questioning or revolt. He sat there as in a world harmonized—then, little by little, reformed itself the discord, the question, the passionate self-reproval for disloyalty and the bewildering answering cry from some mist-wreathed, distance-sunken shore, “_I am not disloyal!_” and then the query of the mind, “_How can that be?_” Garin buried his face in his hands, sat moveless so in the cathedral dusk. Within, there was vision, though not yet was it deep enough. He was seeing the years through which he had sung to the Fair Goal. The time went by. He dropped his hands, rose, and after a genuflection left the great church. Without, Rainier joined him. Together they climbed the steepening street, crossed the castle moat, and entering between Lion and Red Towers, went to the building that lodged De Panemonde and Castel-Noir. Thence, presently, fresh of person and attire, he came alone, and alone crossed courts and went through rooms and echoing passage-ways and by the castle garden until he came to the White Tower. CHAPTER XX THE WHITE TOWER