“That would be the very thing for Leuesa,” she pursued. “I will send her down to talk with you. Truly, we should be very thankful to those choice souls to whom is given the rare virtue of such holy self-sacrifice.”
Aliz spoke the feeling of her day, which could see no bliss for a woman except in marriage, and set single life on a pinnacle of holiness and misery not to be reached by ordinary men and women. The virtues of those self-denying people who sacrificed themselves by adopting it were supposed to be paid into an ecclesiastical treasury, and to form a kind of set-off against the every-day shortcomings of inferior married folks. Therefore Aliz expressed her gratitude for the prospect, as affording her an extra opportunity of doing her duty by proxy.
Derette was in advance of her age.
“But I am not sacrificing myself,” she said. “I am pleasing myself. I should not like to be a wife.”
“Oh, what a saintly creature you must be!” cried Aliz, clasping her hands in admiration. “That you can prefer a holy life! It is given to few indeed to attain that height.”
“But the holy life does not consist in dwelling in one chamber,” suggested Gerhardt, “nor in refraining from matrimony. He that dwelleth in God, in the secret place of the Most High—this is the man that is holy.”
“It would be well for you, Gerard, and your friends,” observed Aliz freezingly, “not to be quite so ready in offering your strange fancies on religious topics. Are you aware that the priests of the city have sent up a memorial concerning you to my Lord the Bishop, and that it has been laid before King Henry?”
The strawberry which Gerhardt’s tool was just then rounding was not quite so perfect a round as its neighbours. He laid the tool down, and the hand which held the carving trembled slightly.
“No, I did not know it,” he said in a low voice. “I thank you for the warning.”
“I fear there may be some penance inflicted on you,” resumed Aliz, not unkindly. “The wisest course for you would be at once to submit, and not even to attempt any excuse.”