rned your faithfulness to prove
And then to make you happy with my love.
But now that through this trial, free from scathe,
Are come your steadfastness and patient faith,
And all that loyal love to me is known,
Which at the last has made me yours alone,
Come, my beloved, take what is your due
And wholly yield to me, as I to you!"

This letter, brought by a friend of hers with every remonstrance that it
was possible to make, was received and read by the gentleman friar with
such sadness of countenance, such sighs and such tears, that it seemed
as though he would drown and burn the poor epistle. But he made no
reply to it, except to tell the messenger that the mortification of his
exceeding passion had cost him so dear as to have taken from him both
the wish to live and the fear to die. He therefore requested her who
had been the cause of this, that since she had not chosen to satisfy
his passionate longings, she would, now that he was rid of them, abstain
from tormenting him, and rest content with the evil which was past. For
that evil he could find no remedy but the choice of an austere life,
which by continual penance might bring him to forget his grief, and, by
fasts and disciplines, subdue his body, till the thought of death should
be to him but a sovereign consolation. Above all, he begged that he
might never hear of her, since he found the mere remembrance of her name
a purgatory not to be endured.

The gentleman went back with this mournful reply, and reported it to the
maiden who did not hear it without intolerable sorrow. But Love, which
will not suffer the spirit utterly to fail, gave her the thought that,
if she could see him, her words and presence might be of more effect
than the writing. She therefore, with her father and the nearest of her
kin, went to the monastery where he abode. She had left nothing in her
box that might set off her beauty, for she felt sure that, could he but
once look at her and hear her, the fire that had so long dwelt in both
their hearts must of necessity be kindled again in greater strength than
before.

Coming thus into the monastery towards the end of vespers, she sent for
him to come to her in a chapel that was in the cloister. He, knowing not
who it was that sought him, went in all ignorance to the sternest battle
in which he had ever been. When she saw him so pale and wan that she
could hardly recognise him, yet filled with grace, in no