Give doubt the password, and the outer battlements are stormed. with pity, and the white banner flutters on the keep.  
Provided her emotions inspire her, a woman is strong; let her take to , and she is a rushlight wavering in the wind. In her red heart lies her divinity; her feet are of clay when reason rules her head.
 
The girl Yeoland took doubt to her that night, a sprite, sharp of wit and wild of eye. All the of were loosed in the silence of the night. Pandora's box stood open, and the hours were void of sleep; faces crowded the shadows, voices in the gloom. Her thoughts rioted like frightened bats fluttering and round a torch. Sleep, like a pale Cassandra, stood and watched the mask of these manifold emotions.
 
Turn and twist as she would amid her fevered pillows, a wild voice haunted her, and piteous. As the cry of one sinking in a stormy sea, it rang out with a . Moreover, there was a subtle echo in her own heart, a strong appeal that did not spare her, toss and struggle as she would. Decision fluttered like a wounded bird. rushed back as an ocean billow from the bastion of a cliff that emblemed mercy.
 
With a beating of wings and a clamour, a screech-owl the . A lamp still burnt beneath the crucifix; the glow had beaconed the bird out of the night. Starting up with a shiver of fear, she the lamp, and crept back to bed. The darkness seemed to her like a cloak; the silence took to ghostly whisperings; a death-watch clicked against the wall.
 
The night crawled on like a funeral cortège. Baffled, outfaced, , she rose from her tumbled bed, and paced the room as in a fever. Still wakefulness and a thousand dishevelled thoughts that hung about her like her snoodless hair. Again and again, she heard the distant whirr and of wheels, the clangour of the wire, as the antique clock in Fulviac's chamber away the hours of night. Each echo of the sound seemed to spur to the quick her wavering resolution. Time was flying, jostling her thoughts as in a mill race. With the dawn, the Lord Flavian would die.
 
Anon she flung the casement wide and stared out into the night. A calm breeze moved amid the masses of , and played upon her face. She bared her breast to its breath, and stood motionless with head thrown back, her white throat amid her hair. Below, the sombre multitudes of the trees showed dim and ghostly, deep with mystery. A vague wind stirred the branches; the dark void with unrest, breaking like a midnight sea upon a cliff. A few straggling stars peeped through the lattice of the sky.
 
She leant against the sill, rested her chin upon her palms, and brooded. Thoughts, fierce, passionate, and , came crying like of wind through a ruined house. Death and dead faces, blood, the yawn of sepulchres, life and the joy of it, all these passed as visions of fire before her fancy. and pity agonised her soul. She answered yea and with the same breath; and pardoned with contradicting . Youth lifted up its face to her, piteous and beautiful. Death reached out a hand into her .
 
Presently, a far glow began to creep into the sky; a gradual greyness absorbed the shadows of the night. The day was dawning. From the forest, the trembling orisons of the birds thrilled like golden light into the air. Unutterable joy seemed to flood from the piping throats. Even the trees seemed to quiver to the sound. With a rush of bitter passion, she closed the casement, cast herself upon her bed, and strove to pray.
 
Again came the impotent groping into nothingness. A mist seemed to rise betwixt her soul and the white face of the Madonna. like an afterglow, and dissolved away into a dark void of doubt. Prayer her; the of her heart died in a endeavour, and she could not think.
 
The spiritual storm wore itself away as the dawn streamed in with a of gold. Yeoland lay and stared at the casement, and the figure of Sebastian rendered radiant by the dawn, the whiteness of his limbs tongued with dusky rills of blood, where the had into the flesh. Sombre were the eyes, and shadowy with suffering. A halo of gold the youthful face. The painted glass about him blazed like a shower of .
 
The Sebastian of the casement recalled to her with wizard power the face of the man wh............