In the act of bending, the cowl was pushed back, and the features of the
monk had the full light of the tapers on them. They were very marked
features, such as lend themselves to popular description. There was the
high arched nose, the prominent under-lip, the coronet of thick dark
hair above the brow, all seeming to tell of energy and passion; there
were the blue-grey eyes, shining mildly under auburn eyelashes, seeming,
like the hands, to tell of acute sensitiveness. Romola felt certain
they were the features of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, the prior of San
Marco, whom she had chiefly thought of as more offensive than other
monks, because he was more noisy. Her rebellion was rising against the
first impression, which had almost forced her to bend her knees.

"Kneel, my daughter," the penetrating voice said again, "the pride of
the body is a barrier against the gifts that purify the soul."

He was looking at her with mild fixedness while he spoke, and again she
felt that subtle mysterious influence of a personality by which it has
been given to some rare men to move their fellows.

Slowly Romola fell on her knees, and in the very act a tremor came over
her; in the renunciation of her proud erectness, her mental attitude
seemed changed, and she found herself in a now state of passiveness.
Her brother began to speak again--

"Romola, in the deep night, as I lay awake, I saw my father's room--the
library--with all the books and the marbles and the leggio, where I used
to stand and read; and I saw you--you were revealed to me as I see you
now, with fair long hair, sitting before my father's chair. And at the
leggio stood a man whose face I could not see. I looked, and looked,
and it was a blank to me, even as a painting effaced; and I saw him move
and take thee, Romola, by the hand; and then I saw thee take my father
by the hand; and you all three went down the stone steps into the
streets, the man whose face was a blank to me leading the way. And you
stood at the altar in Santa Croce, and the priest who married you had
the face of death; and the graves opened, and the dead in their shrouds
rose and followed you like a bridal train. And you passed on through
the streets and the gates into the valley, and it seemed to me that he
who led you hurried you more than you could bear, and the dead were
weary of following you, and turned back to their graves. And at last
you came to a stony place where there was no water, an