d it? I scarcely understand what `the
Church' is. If I rightly know what my damsel means, it signifies all
the Christians. And Christians are Gentiles. How can the sons of
Israel take laws from them? And to speak as if they could abrogate the
law of Him that sitteth in the heavens, before whom they are all less
than nothing and vanity! It is a strange tongue in which my damsel
speaks. I do not understand it."

Neither did Margaret understand Belasez. She sat and looked at her,
with her mind in bewildered confusion. To her, the authority of the
Church was paramount,--was the only irrefragable thing. And here was
something which looked like another Church, setting itself up with some
unaccountable and unheard-of claim to be older, truer, better!--
something which denied that the Church--with horror be it whispered!--
had any right to make laws!--which referred to a law, and a Legislator,
so high above the Church that it scarcely regarded the Church as worth
mention in the matter at all! Margaret felt stunned.

"But God speaks through the Church!" she gasped.

"If that were so, they would speak the same thing," was Belasez's
unanswerable response.

Margaret felt pushed into a corner, and did not know what to say next.
The difference between her point of view and that of Belasez was so
vast, that considerations which would have silenced any one else at once
passed as the idle wind by her. And Margaret could not see how to alter
it.

"I must ask Father Nicholas to show thee how it is," she said at last in
a kindly manner. "I am only an ignorant girl. But he can explain to
thee."

"Can he?" said Belasez. "What explanations of his, or any one's, can
prove that man may please himself about obeying his Maker? He will tell
me--does my damsel think I have never listened to a Christian priest?--
he will tell me to offer incense to yonder gilded image. Had I not
better offer it to myself? I am a living daughter of Israel: is that
not better than the stone image of a dead one?"

"Better than our blessed Lady!" cried the horrified Margaret.

"Perhaps, if she were here, a living woman, she might be the better
woman of the two," said Belasez, coolly. "But a living woman, I am
sure, is better than a stone image, which can neither see, nor hear, nor
feel."

"Oh, but don't you know," said Margaret eagerly, as a bright idea
occurred to her, "that we have the holy Father,--the Pope? He keeps the
Church right;