coarse, nor foul in his conception, and her beauty appealed to him
against his will. So also in his eyes a woman could be sinful, and her
sins might seem terrible to him, and yet she herself was to him a woman
still, a being delicate, refined, tender even in her wickedness; but a
woman who could speak at once keenly and brutally of her marriage
reacted upon him as a very ugly or painful sight, or as a very harsh
and discordant sound that jars every nerve in the body.

"Madam," he said in a low voice, but very quietly and coldly, "I think
not that you are in such state of grace as to bear the Cross to your
good."

Eleanor raised her head and looked at him haughtily, with lids half
drooped as her eyes grew hard and keen.

"You are not my confessor, sir," she retorted. "For all you know, he
may have enjoined upon me a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It is a common
penance." For the third time she laughed.

"A common penance!" cried the abbot, in a tone of despair. "That is
what it has come to in these days. A man kills his neighbour in a
quarrel and goes to Jerusalem to purge him of blood, as he would take a
physician's draught to cure him of the least of little aches. A
pilgrimage is a remedy, as a prayer is a medicine. To repeat the act of
contrition so and so often, or to run through a dozen rosaries of an
afternoon, is a potion for the sick soul."

"Well, what then?" asked the Queen.

"What then?" repeated the abbot. "Then there is no faith left in the