"Was the woman you saw like this woman?" "Not so," the monk answered, "she had dark hair divided down the middle and parted lips. She was like the cousin that I slew and so she smiled." The Bishop groaned. And so he wrung his hands and cried out: "As God is good to me, I saw that naked woman stand so and smile so, in my vestiary, this morning after I had said mass. Six times I made the sign of the cross and she went not away. I was pondering upon the case of the Young Lovell.... She went not away.... Pondering.... God help me, a sinful man.... The eremites of the Libyan desert.... But no, it was not so.... No temptation...." The waves of terror shook that Bishop with the thin features. His hands were so knitted and squeezed together in a paroxysm that it seemed the blood must spurt from his finger nails. And even as he stood, so he groaned with a hollow and continuous sound. Then the monk Francis cried out: "Those are the fairies! Those women are the fairies! God help you, Lord Bishop, you cannot condemn my friend because he has seen them, if you cannot keep them out of your own vestiary.... For all about this world they are.... They peer in upon us. Thro’ the windows they peer in! Looking! Looking! You cannot condemn my friend.... Like beasts of pray in the night they peer into the narrow rooms.... Hungering! ... Hungering!" His voice was like heavy, fierce sobs and it sounded against the Bishop’s moans. "God forgive me," he cried out, "it was upon these that I thought when I comforted my friend with talks of angels and saints.... I lied and thought I was lying.... Angels! These are the little people! The little angels, as the country people say, that were once the angels of God. But they would not aid Him against Lucifer, doubting the issue of the combat.... They it is, have brought this fine weather we enjoy. A great host of them, like fair women, is descended upon this country. They cannot live without fine weather...." Both these churchmen were weakened with fasting and prayers when they might have slept. The monk Francis had great fears, their minds leapt from place to place. That long, bare room seemed surrounded with hosts of fair, evil fiends. He imagined devils with twisted snouts and long claws scraping and scratching at the leads of the painted glass and at the stones of the mortar. Then the Bishop cried out upon him with a fearful voice, calling him ignorant, a fool rustic monk, a low, religious filled with barbarous superstitions. He came close to the monk Francis and cried into his very face: