"Reverend Father," she said, "I will not go to the man I love, trailing
broken vows, like chains, behind me. There could be no harmony in
life's music. Whene'er I moved, where'er I trod, I should hear the
constant clanking of those chains. No man can set me free from vows
made to God. But----"
The Prioress paused, looking past the Bishop at the gracious figure of
the Madonna. She had remembered, of a sudden, how Hugh had knelt
there, saying: "Blessed Virgin . . . help this woman of mine to
understand that if she break her troth to me, holding herself from me,
now, when I am come to claim her, she sends me out to an empty life, to
a hearth beside which no woman will sit, to a home forever desolate."
"But?" said the Bishop, leaning forward. "Yes, my daughter? But?"
"But if our blessed Lady herself vouchsafed me a clear sign that my
first duty is to Hugh, if she absolved me from my vows, making it
evident that God's will for me is that, leaving the Cloister, I should
wed Hugh and dwell with him in his home; then I would strive to bring
myself to do this thing. But I can take release from none save from
our Lord, to Whom those vows were made, or from our Lady, who knoweth
the heart of a woman, and whose grace hath been with me all through the
strivings and conflicts of the years that are past."
The Bishop sighed. "Alas," he said; "alas, poor Hugh!"
For that our Lady should vouchsafe a clear sign, would have to be a
miracle; and, though he would not have admitted it to the Prioress, the
Bishop believed, in his secret heart, that the age of miracles was past.
Pages:
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219