In the night that followed he slept little; it was
now the image of Veranilda that hovered before him and kept him
wakeful, perturbed with a tender longing. God, it might be, would
pardon him his offence against the Divine law; but could he look for
forgiveness from Veranilda? When he thought of the king's last words
he was lured with hope; when he reasoned upon this hope, it turned
to a mocking emptiness. And through the next day, and the next
again, his struggle still went on. He worked and prayed as usual,
and read the Psalms of penitence not once only, but several times in
the four-and-twenty hours; that other psalm, to which he had turned
for strengthening of the spirit, he no longer dared to open. And all
this time he scarce spoke with any one; not that the brethren looked
upon him with less kindness, or held him at a distance, but the
rebuke of his own conscience kept him mute. He felt that his
communion with these holy men was in seeming only, and it shamed him
to contrast their quiet service of the Eternal with the turbid
worldliness of his own thoughts.
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