g. At length, with
uplifted face, he said: "And grant, O my God, that I too may be
faithful, unto the very end."

Then he rose, and rang the Convent bell.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE "SPLENDID KNIGHT"

On the steps of Warwick Castle stood the Knight and his bride.

Their eyes still lingered on the archway through which the noble figure
of Symon, Bishop of Worcester, mounted upon his black mare, Shulamite,
had just disappeared from view.

The marriage had taken place in the Castle chapel, half an hour before,
with an astonishing amount of pomp and ceremony. Priests and acolytes
had appeared from unexpected places. Madonna lilies, on graceful stem,
gleamed white in the shadows of the sacred place. Solemn music rose
and fell; the deep roll of the Gregorian chants, beginning with a low
hum as of giant bees in a vast field of clover; swelling, in
full-throated unison, a majestic volume of sound which rang against the
rafters, waking echoes in the clerestory; then rumbling back into
silence.

Standing beneath the sacred canopy, the bridal pair lifted their eyes
to the high altar and saw, amid a cloud of incense, the Bishop, in
gorgeous vestments, descending the steps and coming toward them.

To Mora, at the time, and afterwards in most thankful remembrance, the
wonder of that which followed lay in the fact that where she had
dreaded an inevitable sense of sacrilege in giving to another that
which had been already consecrated to God, the Bishop so worded the
service as to make her feel that she could still be spiritually the
bride of Christ, even while fulfilling her troth to Hugh; also that, in
accepting the call to this new Vocation, she was not falling from her
old estate, but rather rising above it.

As the words were spoken which made her a wife, it seemed as if the
Bishop gently wrapped her about with a fresh mantle of dignity--that
dignity which had fallen from her in those moments of humiliation when,
at Hugh's bidding she laid herself down upon the stretcher.

The Bishop voiced the Church with a pomp and power which could not be
withstood; and when, in obedience to his command Hugh grasped her right
hand with his right hand, and the Bishop laid his own on either side of
their clasped hands, and pronounced them man and wife, it seemed indeed
as if a Divine touch united them, as if a Divine voice ratified their
vows and sanctified their union.

Mora had never before seen the _man_ so completely merged in