"Come back to me, Hawise Gerard!--from the dead, if thou wilt have it so. Cousin Hawise--fair, gent, shamefaced, loving, holy!--come back to me, and speak with the olden voice, and give me to wit what terrible thing hath been, to take away thyself, and leave but this instead of thee!" Maude's own earnestness was so intense, that she felt as if her passionate words must have moved a granite mountain; but they fell cold and powerless upon Avice de Narbonne. "Look out into the dark this night, Maude, and call thy mother, and see whether she will answer. The dead _cannot_ come back. I have no more power to call back to thee the maiden I was of old, than thou. Rest, maid; and do what thou wilt and canst with that which is." "What can I?" said Maude bitterly. "At least thou canst tell me what hath wrought this fearful change in thee." "Can I?" replied Avice, seating herself on the window-seat, and motioning her cousin to do the same. "And what shall I say it were-- call it light or darkness, love or hate? For six months after I left home I was right woesome. (It is all gone, Maude--the old cottage, and the forge, and the elms--they razed them all!) And then there came into my life a fair false face, and a voice that spake well, and an heart that was black as night. And I trusted him, for I loved him. Loved him--ay, better than all the saints in Heaven! I could have died to save a pang of pain to him, and smiled in doing it. But he was false, false, false! And on the day that I knew it--O that horrible day!--my love turned to black hate within me. I knelt and prayed that my wrong should be avenged--that some sorrow should befal him. But I never meant that. Holy Mary, Lady of Sorrows, thou knewest I never meant that! And that very night I knelt and prayed, he died on the field of battle far away. I knew not he was in danger till four days after. When I so did, I prayed as fervently for his safety. The old love came back upon me, and I could have rent the heavens if my weak hands had reached them, to undo that fearful prayer. But she heard me not--she, the Lady of Pity! She had heard me once too well. And fifteen days later, I knew that I was a widow--that he had died that night, with none to pillow his head or wipe the death-dews from his brow--died unassoiled, unatoned with either God or me! And I had done it. Child, my heart was closed up that day as with a wall of stone. It will never open again. It is not my love that is dead--it is my heart." "But, Hawise, hadst no masses sung for his soul?" asked Maude in loving pity. "Too late," she said, dropping her face upon her hands. "Too late!" "Too late for what?" softly inquired a third voice--so gently and compassionately that no annoyance could be felt. Avice was silent, and Maude answered for her. "For the winning of a soul from Purgatory that hath passed thither without housel ne chrism."