“O Margaret! I wis not what to think. It all sounds so strange and shocking—only that I have not the heart to find fault with thee as I suppose I should do.”
Margaret answered by a little laugh.
“In short,” said she, “thou canst be wicked sometimes like other folk. Be it done! I ensure thee, Annora, it comforts me to know the same. Because it is not real wickedness, only painted. And I fear not painted sin, any more than I hold in honour painted holiness. For real sin is not paint; it is devilishness. And real holiness is not paint; it is dwelling in God. And God is love.”
“But not that sort of love!” I cried.
“Is there any sort but one?” she made answer. “Love is an angel, Annora: it is self-love that is of the Devil. When man helps man to sin, that is not love. How can it be, when God is love, and God and sin are opposites? Tarry until my tale be ended, and then shalt thou be judge thyself how far Roland’s love and mine were sin.”
“Go on,” said I.
“Well,” she said, “for many a week it went no further than looks. Then it came to words.”
“In the church!”
“No, not in the church, my scrupulous sister! We should have felt that as wrong as thou. Through the wall between the gardens, where was a little chink that I dare be bound we were not the first to find. Would that no sinfuller words than ours may ever pass athwart it! We found out that both of us had been thrust into the religious life without our own consent: I, thou savest, by the Queen’s wrath (which I knew not then); he, by a cousin that coveted his inheritance. And we talked much, and at last came to agreement that as neither he nor I had any vocation, it would be more wrong in us to continue in this life than to escape and be we’d.”
“But what priest should ever have wedded a Sister to man training for holy orders?”