eart to find fault with thee as I
suppose I should do."

Margaret answered by a little laugh.

"In short," said she, "thou canst be wicked sometimes like other folk.
Be it done! I ensure thee, Annora, it comforts me to know the same.
Because it is not real wickedness, only painted. And I fear not painted
sin, any more than I hold in honour painted holiness. For real sin is
not paint; it is devilishness. And real holiness is not paint; it is
dwelling in God. And God is love."

"But not that sort of love!" I cried.

"Is there any sort but one?" she made answer. "Love is an angel,
Annora: it is self-love that is of the Devil. When man helps man to
sin, that is not love. How can it be, when God is love, and God and sin
are opposites? Tarry until my tale be ended, and then shalt thou be
judge thyself how far Roland's love and mine were sin."

"Go on," said I.

"Well," she said, "for many a week it went no further than looks. Then
it came to words."

"In the church!"

"No, not in the church, my scrupulous sister! We should have felt that
as wrong as thou. Through the wall between the gardens, where was a
little chink that I dare be bound we were not the first to find. Would
that no sinfuller words than ours may ever pass athwart it! We found
out that both of us had been thrust into the religious life without our
own consent: I, thou savest, by the Queen's wrath (which I knew not
then); he, by a cousin that coveted his inheritance. And we talked
much, and at last came to agreement that as neither he nor I had any
vocation, it would be more wrong in us to continue in this life than to
escape and be we'd."

"But what priest should ever have wedded a Sister to man training for
holy orders?"

"None. We were young, Annora: we thought not of such things. As for
what should come after we were escaped, we left that to chance. Nay,
chide me not for my poor broken dream, for it was a dream alone. The
Prioress found us out. That night I was in solitary cell, barred in my
prison, with no companions save a discipline that I was bidden to use,
and a great stone crucifix that looked down upon me. Ay, I had one
Other, but at first I saw Him not. Nay, nor for eight years afterwards.
Cold, silent, stony, that crucifix looked down: and I thought He was
like that, the living Christ that had died for me, and I turned away
from Him. My heart seemed that night as if it froze to ice. It was
hard and ice-bound fo