Then came the fear of refusal. Often he was paralysed with pain, sometimes he would morbidly allow his thoughts to dwell on the moment when he would hear her say, it was impossible, that she did not and could not love him. The young grey light of the eyes would be fixed upon him; she would speak her sorrow, and her thin hands would hang by her side in the simple attitude that was so peculiar to her. And he mused willingly on the long meek life of grief that would then await him. He would belong to God; his friar’s frock would hide all; it would be the habitation, and the Gothic walls he would raise, the sepulchre of his love....
“But no, no, she shall be mine,” he cried out, moved in his very entrails. Why should she refuse him? What reason had he to believe that she would not have him? H
