And then he remembered that it was long since he had prayed for the soul of his cousin that he had slain. So he set himself upon his knees and sought to make up for lost time in prayer. Those windows faced towards the west, being high over the river that rushes below. And from where one knelt he could see the tower of St. Margaret’s Church through the open casement of stained glass. And at last, towards its setting, the sun shone blood red through all those windows of colours, ruby, purple, vermeil, grass green and the blue of lapis lazuli. All those colours fell upon the tiles of the floor that were hewn with a lily pattern in yellow of the potter. Twenty colours fell upon the figure of the Bishop, lying all in black upon his bed and as many upon the form of the monk where he knelt and prayed. Scarlet irradiated his forehead, purple his chin and shoulder, and to the waist he was bluish. The voices of the pigeons on the roofs lamented the passing of the day with bubbling sounds, the great bell of the cathedral and many other bells called for evening prayer in the fields; it was late, for that was the season of hay-making. Then that praying monk perceived, through the small window, a great red globe hastening down behind the tower of St. Margaret’s Church and, with a sudden deepening, twilight and shadows filled that long room because of the opaque and coloured windows. And ever as the monk prayed there, he was pervaded by the image of his cousin’s face—Passerose of Widdrington she had been called, for she was held to exceed the rose in beauty. In that darkness where he knelt he was pervaded by the thought of her face with the hair divided in the middle, the smooth brow, the so kind eyes and the parted lips. He knew she must be in purgatory for that space, for he had killed her with an arrow in the woodlands, unassoiled, and he could not consider that his prayers yet had sufficed to save her so little as five hundred years of that dread place. Yet, tho’ he knew her to be in purgatory, in those dark shadows he had a sense that she was near him so that he could hear the rustle of her weed moving around him. She had loved green that is very dark in shadowy places. A great longing seized upon him to stretch out his arms and so to touch her. Then he remembered that it was that face that had looked kindly in upon him in his cell, and he groaned and cried upon our Saviour and His Mother to save him from such carnal longings. He had much loved his kind cousin whilst he had been a rough knight of this world. Many had loved her, but he alone remembered, and he considered how she that had been most beautiful was now no more than a horrible and grinning skull, God so willing it with all beauty that is of this world and made of the red blood that courses through the veins.