All that day and night Matilda brooded over Robert's strange behavior. Nevertheless, she greeted him calmly when, the next day, he approached while she was busily spinning before her door. Seeing Rose lying full length upon the grass, idly plucking handfuls of it and flinging them at Matilda, he hesitated. "Why do the feet of a lover lag?" Rose asked, impudently looking up at Annys. Matilda colored. She talked with Annys, while Rose looked on with an amused air. "Ah, Matilda, dear," she began after an instant, "after all, didst thou well to plight thy troth to a poor priest?"

"Wilt ever be serious?" asked her cousin, annoyed.

"I am as serious as a Bishop," she replied. "Indeed I have not seen him kiss thee once. Of a truth I have not."

Matilda vowed she would leave if another word were said of such nonsense. Rose smiled maliciously and watched the poor priest's set face, while all sorts of pert sayings hovered on the end of her tongue.

"Old Silas died," announced Annys, gravely, "I have just come from there."

"And how is dear Betty?"

"I did not get to her last night," he said in some confusion. Rose laughed to herself. Matilda looked grieved. "Ah, the poor girl!" she said, "she longed for you so."

"Oh, these lovers will be the death of me!" broke out Rose, no longer able to contain herself. "Were I blessed with a lover, now, I vow it would not be of corpses and dying girls we would talk!"

"Be quiet, Rose!" exclaimed Matilda, sternly for her, "we talk of serious things."

"That's what I complain of!" pouted the irrepressible girl.

Matilda and Annys spoke together a few minutes in whispers.

At last flinging a handful of grass straight at him:—

"When will be the happy day?" she drawled.

He started nervously. "I have a journey to take," he said in a strained voice. "I leave to-morrow. I do not know just when I can return."

Rose's eyebrows lifted in surprise. Matilda regarded him anxiously.

"Yea, I have received an urgent call. I had come to tell thee."

But there had been no call, and Rose's mocking eyes seemed to read his subterfuge.

"Wilt return for the Fair?" she asked.

"Surely," he answered, "I have promised to be there. Men will gather there from every county."

"I will be there," she announced quickly, and then laughed to see the dismay in his face.

"And Matilda, too, surely?" he hastened to ask. But Matilda shook her head.

"I may not be spared," she said gently.

"Oh, yes, Matilda is the saint. I am the selfish, wilful one," laughed Rose, who seemed determined to make Annys uncomfortable.

"I must go to Betty now," Annys said. "Good-by, Matilda, I shall see thee soon again—immediately after the Fair." He kissed her on the forehead, and for the first time he felt her shrink from his touch.

"Be sure to return in time from that important mission!" Rose called after him. And Matilda looked at her, wondering.

He walked rapidly on, his mind in a whirl, taking no note of where he was going. That sudden, unpremeditated lie agonized him. And yet, perhaps, after all, this lie would be his salvation. Perhaps once away from that girl with her maddening beauty he could cast off the spell she had wrought upon him. It was a daily torture to meet Matilda with a lie on his heart, to meet Rose was but a torture of another kind. Yes, he would go away for a brief spell.

Suddenly he found himself before the walls of the Monastery of the Bury St. Edmonds. For the first time he longed for the peace that was there. There, before him, was but the thickness of a few stones, and yet the men behind it, how immeasurably separated were they from the rest of the world! All the forces of nature—chains of mountains and the turbulent streams of the forests—had not in them the powers of isolation that rested in that wall erected by the hand of man. He stood without, in the midst of the strenuousness, the revolt, the passion, and sorrow of the world: they within were taken up and cared for as little children in the lap of some great-hearted Mother. The world and its ways and all worldliness went on far from them, and no sound of the battle of the forces, good and evil, ever was heard. An orderly and unbroken succession of tasks was laid out for them. They had no difficult problems to weigh, no decisions to make. Ah, how he envied them for that! There was no fretting over the duty of the morrow or the day after the morrow, the mind was kept fixed on the duty of the moment; from this one passed imperceptibly to the duty of the hour, to the duty of the day. From Matin to Prime and from Prime to Tierce, from Tierce to Sexte, and Sexte to None, and again to Vespers and on to Compline, certain tasks that in no case may be missed or deferred: prayers to be chanted during the day; one hundred and fifty psalms of David divided so that the whole psalter should be chanted every week; the taking one's turn to be cook, or to wait upon the table in the refectory, or to read from some pious book while the others ate in silence. So, calmly, unresisting, one slipped down the gentle slope to death.

Ah, no wonder Alcuin had passionately lamented his cloister when he was called to the court of Charlemagne:—

But the solace of even a short sojourn within a Monastery was denied him—the excommunicated one. It had been easy for him to fling defiance to the Church when upheld by his sense of righteousness, but now, no longer sinless, he yearned to kneel before the altar and be shrived.

In the course of his life it had come to him to determine what was the right thing to do—there had never been a question of knowing the right and not doing it. Now the right path lay clearly defined, without the slightest doubt, yet it was to be a life and death struggle to follow it. During the past few days he had pored for hours at a time over the "Lives of the Saints," reading again and again their denunciations of women, hoping to strengthen his purpose to prove that the love of woman could be pure. It was his most deeply cherished hope that his example in taking a wife like Matilda would lead to the establishment of a married clergy. Up to this moment, knowing the purity and nobility of his motives, he had not shrunk from the indignation of the Churchmen that was sure to break forth on his taking a woman openly in wedlock. And now he was obliged to admit to himself that he loved a woman whom it would be impossible to marry. Impossible because of his plighted troth to Matilda, but also—and that hurt deeper—because she was surely no ideal priest's wife. His high and mighty theories on the marriage of the clergy must vanish into thin air if he held up Rose as a proper spouse for a priest of God. Rose to kneel before the leper and wash his feet! Rose to enter the homes of the afflicted and hunger-stricken and bring them comfort! No, there was nothing gained by trying to shut his eyes to the truth. He loved a woman who could not further one strong hope of his soul, who could not answer to one noble impulse.

But that was precisely what he had done. Every argument proved conclusively that he never ought to see Rose Westel again. But one might as well seek by argument to stop a raging flood from bearing down upon one as to attempt to argue away an emotion. There was no need to convince him that he ought to hate the woman who had so suddenly wrought ruin upon his most cherished hopes. A part of him did hate her—the rest of him adored.

There was prayer left to him. He had tried prayer with all the fervor of his tortured soul. The night before, following the advice of one of the Fathers, he had passed upon his knees reiterating only the one phrase,—

His heart was overshadowed by the thought that God had surely withdrawn His love from him or He could not permit him to suffer so. Again and again he had flung himself on his knees and sobbed out the prayer uttered by St. Augustine when he was endeavoring to overcome the ways of his youth:—

It was easy when alone to ponder over such words as those of St. Jerome:—

It was easy to feel the truth of St. Dominic's admonition:—

All very admirable, yet they were but words, words, words. Excellent counsellings, wise reasonings, they were, but could they master one wild throb of his veins leaping in her presence? Could they make the vision of her one whit less radiant and compelling? Had he created the world? Was it his fault or the fault of the Creator of all things that this great longing for her held him in subjection, and that until that was satisfied there was no peace for him in all the wide, wide world? The wildest thoughts ran through his mind at times. It was not too late, he would recant, and go back and enter the Church, and become a great and powerful prelate. He could yet live in a palace and offer her a fitting setting for her glorious beauty. If he closed his eyes he never failed to see himself in magnificent robes seated at the centre of the great table with her at his side. He could see the gleam of jewels as they rose and fell on her white bosom; he could see the light in her eyes as she turned toward him; he could feel the thrill from the touch of her soft white hands.

Yes, it was best to go and strive with all his might to forget Rose Westel, and return to the Bury with his honor unstained, return to keep his troth with Matilda.

He had promised to return immediately after the Fair. This great Fair of Stourbridge had for over a year been looked to as an important meeting place before the final rendezvous at Blackheath. It lacked now but a few days before its opening, for over a fortnight past it had been officially proclaimed by officers going about the country forbidding any merchant to sell or exhibit for sale any goods in any place for a distance of seven leagues about, except inside the gates of the Fair.

Inside these gates there would be gathered people from leagues away on every side. It would be a precious opportunity, for in no wise else might the people gather together in great numbers without exciting suspicion. Here at the Fair, under the pretence of buying and trading, the most important conferences could take place, final arrangements for the great gathering be talked over, and the march on to the Maidstone gaol with ten thousand of men as Ball had foretold could be planned. Here minstrels could go about singing the songs that set the blood of the rustics a-tingling, so that they might be heartened for the long hard winter that yet lay before them.