She shivered; then remembered how she had shivered at sound of the
turning of the key in the lock of the crypt-way door. How great the
change wrought by eight days of love and liberty. She had shuddered
then at being irrevocably shut out from the Cloister. She shuddered
now because the arrival of a messenger from the Bishop, and something
indefinable in Hugh's manner, had caused her to look back.
She stood quite still. None came to seek her. She seemed to have
turned to stone.
It was not the first time this looking back had had a petrifying effect
upon a woman. She remembered Lot's wife, going forward led by the
gentle pressure of an angel's hand, yet looking back the moment that
pressure was removed.
She had gone forward, led by the sweet angel of our Lady's gracious
message. Why should she look back? Rather would she act upon the
sacred precept: "Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching
forth unto those things which are before"--this, said the apostle Saint
Paul, was the one thing to do. Undoubtedly now it was the one and only
thing for her to do; leaving all else which might have to be done, to
her husband and to the Bishop.
"This one thing I do," she said aloud; "this one thing I do." And
moving forward, in the strength of that resolve, she passed out into
the sunshine.
"_Do it now!_" sang the thrush, in the rowan-tree.
CHAPTER XLVII
THE BISHOP IS TAKEN UNAWARES
Symon of Worcester, seated before a table in the library, pondered a
letter which had reached him the evening before, brought by a messenger
from the Vatican.
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