But Eleanore had begun her attack, and she would not be repulsed in the first onslaught. “And has no woman, Reverend Father, known thy love?” she demanded.
“Madame!” A pale flush overspread St. Nazaire’s face. “That question is not—kind,” he said haltingly, but without rebuke.
“Nay. I am not kind now. Make me answer.”
St. Nazaire looked at her thoughtfully, and weighed certain things in certain balances. Because of many years of the confessional and also of free confidence he knew Eleanore thoroughly,—knew how she had suffered every soul-torment; knew her unswerving virtue; sympathized with her intense loneliness. He prized her trust in him more than she was aware, and he feared to jeopardize that confidence now by whatever answer he should make. Ignorant of the purport of her questions, he yet saw that she was in terrible earnest in them. So finally he did the honest and straightforward thing. Answering her look, eye for eye, he said slowly: “Yea, Eleanore of Le Crépuscule, a woman hath known my love. What then?”
“Then if thou, a good man and as strong as any the Church ever knew, found that to human nature a loveless life is an impossibility, how shouldst thou blame a maid, high-strung, full of youth, vitality, emotions that she has not tried, for yielding to the same temptation before which thou didst fall? How is it right that the Church—that God—should demand so much?—should ask more than His creatures can give?”
“Eleanore! Eleanore! thou shalt not question God!”
“I do not question Him. It is—it is—” untried in this exercise, she groped for words. “It is what ye say He saith. It is what ye declare His will to be that I question.”
“What, Eleanore, have I declared His will to be? Have I yet blamed or chid the waywardness of Laure, whom indeed I loved as a dear daughter,—a child of purity and faith?”
“Then, then,” Eleanore bent over eagerly, and her voice shook,—“then, an thou blamest her not, St. Nazaire, thou wilt not—” she clasped her hands in an agony of pleading, “thou wilt not put upon her the terrible ban? Thou wilt not excommunicate her?”
It was only then that the Bishop realized how skilfully she had led up to her point. He had not realized that he was dealing with perception engendered by an agony of grief and fear. As she reached her climax, he sprang to his feet, and began to pace the room, hands clasped behind him, brows much contracted, head far bent upon his breast. Eleanore, meantime, had slid to her knees and watched him as he moved.