been tested and found worthy."

"Is that what courtly love means?"

"Yes, and that is why it is more beautiful than marriage. Husband and
wife may embrace carnally the moment the priest says the words over
them. No, they are _required_ to. Courtly lovers know each other only
when love has fully prepared the way, so that their coming together may
be a moment of perfect beauty."

Sophia looked at him silently. Her face was suddenly unreadable.

"Do you understand?" he asked after he had stood awhile gazing into her
lustrous brown eyes. "These ideas are perhaps new to you."

"The woman is ruler of the man?"

"Yes."

The corners of her mouth quirked. "Then what if I were to command you to
get into this bed with me?"

He was certain from her sly smile that she was joking. But he could
think of no clever answer. He considered what he had read, what he had
been told, what he had done with other women. None of it helped. The
women who fell into bed with him on the first tryst had not been serious
about love, nor had he been. In all the lore of l'amour courtois the
woman made the man wait--sometimes for years, sometimes for his entire
life--and the man was happy to wait, and that was all there was to it.

Then he remembered something his mother had said, a secret so precious
he would never tell anyone, not even Sophia. Not even Friar Mathieu
needed to know it. But it guided Simon now.

_The first time your father and I were alone together I wanted him then
and there. But he was strong enough for both of us. It was a whole year
before we possessed each other in body. And you came of that union._

"You will not command me so," he said with cheerful confidence.

Her eyebrows rose--they were strong and dark, like a raven's wings.
"Indeed?"

"Because you know how much better it would be to wait. We both want each
other now. But if we restrain that hunger, it will grow. It will be not
just a desire of the flesh, but a longing of the spirit. It is said that
the souls in paradise know no greater happiness than two lovers do, who
are united in soul as well as body."

"Prodigioso," she said. "But I am just a Sicilian girl, and I do not
perhaps have the refined spiritual appetite of a French nobleman. What
if I cannot wait?"

"It is natural," Simon said, thinking again of what his mother had
confided to him. "Then I must be strong enough for both of us."

The thought of her powerful passions, which she restrained with su