might it be? . . . What the mischief, had the
Bishop named his palfrey? . . . Sheba? Nay, that was the ass!
Solomon? Nay, that was the mare! Yet--how came a mare to be named
Solomon?

In his disturbed mental state it irritated him unreasonably that a mare
should be called after a king with seven hundred wives! Then he
remembered "black, but comely," and arrived at the right name,
Shulamite. Of course! Not Solomon but Shulamite. He had read that
love-poem of the unnamed Eastern shepherd, with the Rabbi in the
mountain fastness. The Rabbi had pointed out that the word used in
that description signified "sunburned." The lovely Shulamite maiden,
exposed to the Eastern sun while tending her kids and keeping the
vineyards, had tanned a ruddy brown, beside which the daughters of
Jerusalem, enclosed in King Solomon's scented harem, looked pale as
wilting lilies. Remembering the glossy coat of the black mare, Hugh
wondered, with a momentary sense of merriment, whether the Bishop
supposed the maiden of the "Song of Songs" to have been an Ethiopian.

Then he remembered "Iconoklastes." Yes, surely! The palfrey was
Iconoklastes. Now wherefore gave the Bishop such a name to his white
palfrey?

Striding blindly about the lawn, of a sudden the Knight stepped full on
to a flower-bed. At once he seemed to hear the Bishop's gentle voice:
"I named him Iconoklastes because he trampled to ruin some flower-beds
on which I spent much time and care, and of which I was inordinately
fond."

Ah! . . . That was it! The destroyer of fair bloom and blossom, of
buds of promise; of the loveliness of a tended garden. . . . Was this
then what he seemed to Mora? He, who had forced her to yield to the
insistence of his love? . . . In her chaste Convent cell, she could
have remained true to this Ideal love of her girlhood: and, now that
she knew it to have been called forth by love, could have received,
mentally, its full fruition. Also, in time she might have discovered
the identity of the Bishop with Father Gervaise, and long years of
perfect friendship might have proved a solace to their sundered hearts,
had not he--the trampler upon flower-beds--rudely intervened.

And yet--Mora had been betrothed to him, her love had been his, long
after Father Gervaise had left the land.

How could he win her back to be once more as she was when they parted
on the castle battlements eight years before?

How could he free himself, and he