She was allowed her liberty to go wherever she pleased. In her trouble
she used to run into the woods, with a sort of blind sense that
physical distress would act counter to her sick soul. She would run as
fast as she could: her tears flew behind her like rain. Over and over
to herself she whispered Prosper's name as she ran--"Prosper! Prosper
le Gai! Prosper! Prosper, my lord!" and so on, just as if she were
mad. It was in the course of these distracted pranks that she
discovered and fell in love with a young pine tree, slim and straight.
She thought that it (like the ring) held the spirit of Prosper, and
adored him under its bark. She cut a heart in it with his name set in
the midst and her own beneath. Ceremony thereafter became her relief
and all she cared about. She did mystic rites before her tree (in
which the ring played a part), forgetting herself for the time. She
would draw out her ring and look at it, then kiss it. Then it must be
lifted up to the length of its chain as she had seen the priest
elevate the Host at Mass; she genuflected and fell prone in mute
adoration, crying all the time with tears streaming down her face. She
was at this time like to dissolve in tears! Without fail the mysteries
ended with the Pater Noster, the Ave, a certain Litany which
the nuns had taught her, and some gasping words of urgency to the Virgin
and Saint Isidore. Love was scourging her slender body at this time truly,
and with well-pickled rods.
On a certain day of mid-March,--it would be about the twelfth,--as she
was at these exercises about the mystic tree, a tall lady in Lincoln
green and silver furs came out of a thicket and saw Isoult, though
Isoult saw not her. She stood smiling, watching the poor devotee;
then, choosing her time, came quietly behind her, saw the heart and
read the names. This made her smile all the more, and think a little.
Then she touched Isoult on the shoulder with the effect of bringing
her from heaven to dull earth in a trice. By some instinct--she was
made of instincts, quick as a bird--the girl concealed her ring before
she turned.
"Why are you crying, child?" said this smiling lady.
"Oh ma'am!" cried the girl, half crazy and beside herself with her
troubles--"Oh, ma'am! let me tell you a little!"
She told her more than a little: she told her in fact everything--in a
torrent of words and tears--except the one thing that might have
helped her. She did not say that she was married, though short of that
she gulped the shame of loving unloved.