But she answered Nay, death-white; and still as he urged
She adversely spake, overmuch as she loved the while,
Till he pressed for why, and she led with the face of one scourged
   To the neighbouring aisle,

And showed him the words, ever gleaming upon her pew,
Memorizing her there as the knight’s eternal wife,
Or falsing such, debarred inheritance due
   Of celestial life.

He blenched, and reproached her that one yet undeceased
Should bury her future—­that future which none can spell;
And she wept, and purposed anon to inquire of the priest
   If the price were hell

Of her wedding in face of the record.  Her lover agreed,
And they parted before the brass with a shudderful kiss,
For it seemed to flash out on their impulse of passionate need,
   “Mock ye not this!”

Well, the priest, whom more perceptions moved than one,
Said she erred at the first to have written as if she were dead
Her name and adjuration; but since it was done
   Nought could be said

Save that she must abide by the pledge, for the peace of her soul,
And so, by her life, maintain the apostrophe good,
If she wished anon to reach the coveted goal
   Of beatitude.

To erase from the consecrate text her prayer as there prayed
Would aver that, since earth’s joys most drew her, past doubt,
Friends’ prayers for her joy above by Jesu’s aid
   Could be done without.

Moreover she thought of the laughter, the shrug, the jibe
That would rise at her back in the nave when she should pass
As another’s avowed by the words she had chosen to inscribe
   On the changeless brass.

And so for months she replied to her Love:  “No, no”;
While sorrow was gnawing her beauties ever and more,
Till he, long-suffering and weary, grew to show
   Less warmth than before.

And, after an absence, wrote words absolute: 
That he gave her till Midsummer morn to make her mind clear;
And that if, by then, she had not said Yea to his suit,
   He should wed elsewhere.

Thence on, at unwonted times through the lengthening days
She was seen in the church—­at dawn, or when the sun dipt
And the moon rose, standing with hands joined, blank of gaze,
   Before the script.

She thinned as he came not; shrank like a creature that cowers
As summer drew nearer; but still had not promised to wed,
When, just at the zenith of June, in the still night hours,
   She was missed from her bed.

“The church!” they whispered with qualms; “where often she sits.” 
They found her:  facing the brass there, else seeing none,
But feeling the words with her finger, gibbering in fits;
   And she knew them not one.

And so she remained, in her handmaids’ charge; late, soon,
Tracing words in the air with her finger, as seen that night —
Those incised on the brass—­till at length unwatched one noon,
   She vanished from sight.