"Since when?" he asked. "The subject is too near my heart for me not to have searched to see. And five hundred years ago, I have read, before the days of Hildebrand the pope, many a village pastor had his lawful wife, whom he loved as I love Bertha; for God knows neither she nor I ever loved another."
"Does this satisfy her conscience?" I asked.
"Sometimes," he replied bitterly, "but only sometimes. Oftener she lives as one under a curse, afraid to receive any good thing, and bowing to every sorrow as her bitter desert, and the foretaste of the terrible retribution to come."
"Whatever is not of faith is sin," I murmured.
"But what will be the portion of those who call what God sanctions sin," he said, "and bring trouble and pollution into hearts as pure as hers?"
The woman entered the room as he was speaking, and must have caught his words, for a deep crimson flushed her pale face. As she turned away, her whole frame quivered with a suppressed sob. But afterwards, when the priest left the room, she came up to me and said, looking with her sad, dark, lustreless eyes at me, "You were saying that some doubt the efficacy of these indulgences? But do you? I cannot trust him," she added softly, "he would be afraid to tell me if he thought so."
I hesitated what to say. I could not tell an untruth; and before those searching, earnest eyes, any attempt at evasion would have been vain.
"You do not believe this letter can do anything for me," she said; "nor do I." And moving quietly to the hearth, she tore the indulgence into shreds, and threw it on the flames.
"Do not tell him this," she said; "he thinks it comforts me."
I tried to say some words about repentance and forgiveness being free to all.