'It is possible that I think like one, and very natural remembering how I was nurtured. There is one task, one purpose which has detained me in this world of men. When that is accomplished, I think I shall go back to the cell where there is peace.'
'You!' Her hands had fallen from his arms. She gasped now in her amazement. 'With the world at your feet if you choose! To renounce all? To go back to the chill loneliness and joylessness of monkhood? Bellarion, you are mad.'
'Or else sane, madonna. Who shall judge?'
'And love, Bellarion? Is there no love in the world? Does that not lend reality to all these things that you deem shams?'
'Does it heal the vanity of the world?' he cried. 'It is a great power, as I perceive. For love men will go mad, they will become beasts: they will murder and betray.'
'Heretic!'
That startled him a little. Once before he had been dubbed heretic for beliefs to which he clung with assurance; and experience had come to lay bare his heresy to his own eyes.
'Upon occasion, madonna, we have talked of love, you and I. Had I given heed, had your beauty beglamoured me, what a treacherous thing should I not have been in Facino's eyes! Do you wonder that I mistrust love as I mistrust all else the world can offer me?'
'While Facino lived, that ...' She broke off. Her eyes were on the ground, her hands now folded in her lap. She had drawn away from him a little and leaned against the table's edge. 'Now ...' She parted her hands and held them out, leaving him to guess her mind.
'Now his behests are upon me, and they shall be obeyed as if he still lived.'