"Yes, I should," she admitted, "but you should have left me to say it." Then she returned to her original bewilderment. "But, my dear boy, if she is a sister of mercy she has taken vows."
"Oh, no, we don't do that in Jingalo. No Jingalese Church-woman may throw away her whole life on so problematical a benefit as a religious vow of celibacy. She may lease herself to Heaven for a given number of years, but freeholds are not allowed."
"And you call that a Church!" cried the Countess.
"Well," said the Prince, "I think that in this case she has got hold of a scientific point worth keeping. Seven years ago I was not, science tells me, the man that I am now; and seven years hence I shall be yet another. What right has my past man to bind this present 'me' in which he has no particle of a share?" And Max, having taken wing on a fresh notion, was off into flight when the Countess brought him to earth.
"And how long is your next lease going to be?" she inquired dryly, "if seven years is all you can answer for?"
"My next man will renew," said Max confidently.
"Sisters of mercy don't accept tenants on those terms," she retorted. And then, seeing that he looked at her with a benevolent eye, added, "Oh, yes, I know that I did, but that isn't the sort of mercy you are looking for now. You'll find, Max, that you need a religion in order to become a freeholder. Mark my word! There! I couldn't have put it better than that! And now as I've come to the end of my lease I had better retire and see to dilapidations and repairs."
She left him smiling; but he knew, in spite of her brave face and jesting words, that there was still trouble of spirit to be gone through; and the repairs took some time.
III
In the days that followed, Max, now launched on his new quest, had as good and sympathetic a listener as lover could wish. And while the Countess thus paid penance and endured some purgatory for a five years' breach with her own conscience, she found compensations, as all sensibly good women will when they come on logical results of their own making. In our conventional readiness to reverence the mother and disown the mistress as social institutions, we are apt to ignore, as though the mere suggestion were an impiety, the fact that in their instincts and affections they have often much in common. It is one of Nature's kindest and wisest economies; yet perhaps the woman treasures it secretly, because it is a quality of her sex scarcely to be understood by men. The chaste mistress sleeps in many a mother's breast, ready to welcome in her grown son that touch of the lover which nestles before it takes flight; and in the unchaste mistress, homely of heart, there is often more of the mother than her paramour has wit to discern.