"
"Even if I were not half a monk, but one altogether, I should not
wholly understand your Grace's speech;" Gilbert smiled, too, for he was
immeasurably far from guessing what was in her mind.
"So I have thought, in all these weeks and days while we have been
together."
Her eyes darkened as she looked at him, but his were clear and calm.
"Do you understand this?" she asked, and she laid her two hands upon
his shoulders.
"What?" he asked in surprise.
"This," she said, very softly, drawing herself near to him by her
hands.
Then he knew, and he would have straightened himself, but her hands
sprang to meet each other round his neck, and her face was close to
his. But the vision of his own sinful mother rose in her eyes to meet
him.
She held him fast, and three times she kissed him before she would let
him go.
CHAPTER VIII
Gilbert had reached Paris in the train of Duke Geoffrey in September;
the Christmas bells were ringing when he first caught sight of the
walls and towers of Rome. As he drew rein on the crest of a low hill,
the desolate brown waste of the Campagna stretched behind him mile upon
mile to northward, toward the impenetrable forests of Viterbo, and Rome
was at last before him. Before him rose the huge half-ruined walls of
Aurelian, battered by Goth and Saracen and imperial Greek; before him
towered the fortress of Hadrian's tomb, vast, impregnable, ferocious.
Here and there above the broken crenellation of the city's battlements
rose dark and slender towers, square and round, marking the places
where strong robbers had fortified themselves within the city.
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