“Margaret,” I said, “Mother Ada would say it was wicked, but mine heart is for ever asking the same questions.”
“Is it?” she said eagerly. “O Annora! then thou knowest! I thought, maybe, thou shouldst count it wicked, and chide me for indulging such thoughts.”
“How could I chide any one, sinner as I am!” said I. “Nay, Margaret, I doubt not my thoughts have been far unholier than thine. Thou rememberest not, I am sure; but ere we were professed, I was troth-plight unto a young noble, and always that life that I have lost flitteth afore me, as a bird that held a jewel in his beak might lure me on from flower to flower, ever following, never grasping the sweet illusion. Margaret, sister, despise me not for my confession! But thou wilt see I am no saint, nor like to be.”
“Despise thee!” she said. “Dear heart, wert thou to know how much further I have gone!”
I looked on her with some alarm.
“Margaret! we are professed religious women.” (Note 1.)
“Religious women!” she answered. “If thou gild a piece of wood, doth it become gold? Religious women are not women that wear black and white, cut in a certain fashion: they are women that set God above all things. And have I not done that? Have I not laid mine heart upon His altar, a living sacrifice, because I believed He called me to break that poor quivering thing in twain? And will He judge me that did His will, to the best of my power and knowledge, because now and then a human sob breaks from my woman-heart, by reason that I am not yet an angel, and that He did not make me a stone? I do not believe it. I will not believe it. He that gave His own Son to die for man can be no Moloch delighting in human suffering—caring not how many hearts be crushed so long as there be flowers upon His altar, how many lives be made desolate so long as there be choirs to sing antiphons! Annora, it is not God who does such things, but men.”
I was doubtful how to answer, seeing I could not understand what she meant. I only said—
“Yet God permits men to do them.”
“Ay. But He never bids them to make others suffer,—far less to take pleasure in doing so.”