But the Young Lovell would have none of these things, neither would he be persuaded to rise from his knees; but, being there, he said a long prayer to Our Lord that hung from the crucifix and appeared in an agony. And the monk sat himself at the foot of the box of straw covered with a rug that was his bed and again marvelled at the face of his friend. For the long, brown hair was blanched by the sun, the closed eyes were sunken, the lids gone bluish, the lips parched as if with desire. And so, whilst the lording prayed, the monk sat on the bed foot. Then he heard a rustle of wings and, on the sill of the glassless window, he saw a blue dove and, in the sunlight without, a fair woman that peered in at that window and smiled—all white and with the sunlight upon her. The monk got down from the bed foot, to reprove her courteously, for no woman should be seen there between the church and the monk’s cells. But then he considered that it might be a penitent of one of the other monks, and when he looked towards the window again, the woman and the dove alike had vanished from the view of that window, and he judged he had better let the matter be. And so he sat down upon the bed foot. The Young Lovell groaned several times in his praying, and most he had groaned when that fair woman had looked in at the cell. His breathing made a heavy sound in the silent room. And then he cried out in a great, lamentable voice: "I have been with a fairy woman! Three months long I have looked upon the whiteness of a fairy woman! Who shall absolve me?" The monk slipped down from the bed. "Ah misericordia!" he cried out and: "Jesu pity us!" His face went pale even to the edges of his lips and, involuntarily, he moved backwards away from that sinner until he crouched against the wall. Then they were silent a longtime and the large flies buzzed in at the window and out. Then the monk took his courage to himself again. "But if you truly repent," he said quickly, "lording, and my friend, and sinner, you may be pardoned." And since the young lord still kept silence he asked many swift questions: What sort of woman was this? Where was her bower? How had she entertained him and he her? Had he eaten of fruits from her dishes? Had he done deeds of dishonesty with a willing heart? How did he know her for a fairy woman? Had he partaken of magic rites; sprinkled the blood of newborn babies; taken gifts of gold; witnessed a black mass; gathered fernseed? The monk asked all these questions with a breathless speed that they might the more quickly be affirmed or denied. And at last the young lord cried out as if in an agony: "All that is a child’s tale! All that is a weary folly! It was not like that...." And then he cried again: