g sky had gradually faded away, and the full moon was
pouring a shower of silver upon the orange-trees. As Agnes sat on the
parapet, with the moonlight streaming down on her young, spiritual face,
now tremulous with deep suppressed emotion, the painter thought he had
never seen any human creature that looked nearer to his conception of a
celestial being.

They both sat awhile in that kind of quietude which often falls between
two who have stirred some deep fountain of emotion. All was so still
around them, that the drip and trickle of the little stream which fell
from the garden wall into the dark abyss of the gorge could well be
heard as it pattered from one rocky point to another, with a slender,
lulling sound.

Suddenly the reveries of the two were disturbed by the shadow of a
figure which passed into the moonlight and seemed to rise from the side
of the gorge. A man enveloped in a dark cloak with a peaked hood stepped
across the moss-grown garden parapet, stood a moment irresolute, then
the cloak dropped suddenly from him, and the Cavalier stood in the
moonlight before Agnes. He bore in his hand a tall stalk of white lily,
with open blossoms and buds and tender fluted green leaves, such as one
sees in a thousand pictures of the Annunciation. The moonlight fell full
upon his face, revealing his haughty yet beautiful features, agitated
by some profound emotion. The monk and the girl were both too much
surprised for a moment to utter a sound; and when, after an instant, the
monk made a half-movement as if to address him, the cavalier raised his
right hand with a sudden authoritative gesture which silenced him. Then
turning toward Agnes, he kneeled, and kissing the hem of her robe, and
laying the lily in her lap, "Holiest and dearest," he said, "oh, forget
not to pray for me!" He rose again in a moment, and, throwing his
cloak around him, sprang over the garden wall, and was heard rapidly
descending into the shadows of the gorge.

All this passed so quickly that it seemed to both the spectators like a
dream. The splendid man, with his jewelled weapons, his haughty bearing,
and air of easy command, bowing with such solemn humility before the
peasant girl, reminded the monk of the barbaric princes in the wonderful
legends he had read, who had been drawn by some heavenly inspiration to
come and render themselves up to the teachings of holy virgins, chosen
of the Lord, in divine solitudes. In the poetical world in which h