But Balthis was not to be soothed. “Ninzian, this is a terrible thing for me to be learning! There was never a husband who better knew his place, and the only baby you ever upset me with is at the pawnbroker’s, and Holy Church has not ever had a more loyal servitor—”
“No,” Ninzian said, quietly.
“—But you have been a hideous demon in deep hell, and the man that I have loved is a false seeming, and the moment St. Holmendis ascends to bliss you mean to go on with your foul iniquities. That is foolish of you, because of course I would never permit it. But, even so—! Oh, Ninzian, my faith and my happiness are buried now in the one grave, now that all ends between us!”
Ninzian asked, still very quietly: “And do you think I will leave you, my Balthis, because of some disarranged fresh earth? Could any handful of dirt have parted us when because of my great love for you I fought the seven knights at Évre—”
“What chance had the poor fellows against a devil!”
“It is the principle of the thing, my darling,—as well as the mathematics. Also, as I was going on to observe, you would never have been flinging mud in my face when for your sake I overthrew Duke Oribert and his deplorable custom of the cat and the serpent, and cast the Spotted Dun of Lorcha down from a high hill.”
She answered without pity: “You will be lucky to get out of this mud with a whole skin. For it is on this evening of the month that St. Holmendis hears my confession, and I must confess everything, and you know as well as I do of his devastating miracles.”
Ninzian, having thus failed in his appeal to the better qualities of his wife, forthwith returned to soliciting her powers of reason.
“Balthis, my sweet, now, after all, what complaint have you against me? You cannot help feeling that the no doubt ill-advised rebellion in which I was concerned in youth, unarithmeticable æons before this Earth was thought of, took place quite long enough ago to be forgotten. Besides, you know by experience that I am only too easily guided by others, that I have never learned, as you so eloquently phrase it, to have any backbone. And I do not really see, either, how you can want to punish me to-day for iniquities which, you grant, I have not ever committed, but—so you assume, without any warrant known to me—have just vaguely thought of committing by and by, and it may be, not for years to come—my adorable pouting darling—because this stringy Holmendis seems tough as whit-leather—”
Ninzian’s stammered talking died away. He saw there was no moving her.