The door of Denise’s cell was shut, nor could Dom Silvius see her stirring in her garden. “Perhaps she is abroad,” thought he, “or maybe she is at her prayers,” so he rode up quietly, dismounted, and looped his bridle over the post of the wicket gate. Then he went in and up the path, and was about to knock softly, when the door opened under his very hand, and Silvius saw a figure in grey standing upon the threshold. Dom Silvius dropped his eyes suddenly as though he blamed himself for being surprised into staring at a woman’s face. “The grace of Our Lady to you, Sister,” he said. “I was in doubt whether I should find you at home or no.” Now Silvius was not a shred embarrassed, though he pretended to a kind of saintly coyness. He had his eyes on the sandalled feet that showed under the hem of the grey gown. They were very comely feet, with the brown straps of the sandals contrasting with the nut brown of the skin, and Dom Silvius was thinking how different these feet were with their arched insteps and straight toes from the gouty and behumped members that shuffled and progressed in the Abbey cloisters. Yet in looking at Denise’s feet the almoner missed the first shadows of a tragedy. Denise stood very still, her hood drawn forward, one hand holding the edge of the door. The face under the hood expressed nothing, if despair be nothing more than a pale, mute mask. Yet the eyes that looked at the monk were the eyes of one whose blood was full of a spiritual fever. “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?”