"Listen, my Lady Joan! I love you—there is no use in hiding it. Doubtless you yourself have already seen it. I love you so greatly that vows, promises, priesthoods, cardinalates are no more to me than the crying of the seabirds out yonder. Let a worthier than I receive and hold them. They are not for a weak and sinful man. My bishopric let another take. I would rather be your groom, your servitor, your lacquey, than reign on the Seven Hills and sit in Holy Peter's chair!"
Joan leaned against the crumbling battlement, and the words of Conrad were very sweet in her ear. They filled her with pity, while at the same time her heart was strong within her. None had dared to speak such things to her before in all her life, and she was a woman. The Princess Margaret, had she loved a man as Joan did this man, would have given back vow for vow, renunciation for renunciation, and, it might be, have bartered kiss for kiss.
But Joan of the Sword Hand was never stronger, never more serene, never surer of herself than when she listened to the words she loved best to hear, from the lips of the man whom of all others she desired to speak them. At first she had been looking out upon the sea, but now she permitted her eyes to rest with a great kindliness upon the young man. Even as he spoke Conrad divined the thing that was in her heart.
"Mark you," he said, "do me the justice to remember that I ask for nothing. I expect nothing. I hope for nothing in return. I thought once that I could love Divine things wholly. Now I know that my heart is too earthly. But instead I love the noblest and most gracious woman in all the world. And I love her, too, with a love not wholly unworthy of her."
"You do me overmuch honour," said Joan quietly. "I, too, am weak and sinful. Or how else would I, your brother's wife, listen to such words from any man—least of all from you?"
"Nay," said Conrad; "you only listen out of your great pitifulness. But I am no worthy priest. I will not take upon me the yet greater things for which I am so manifestly unfitted. I will not sully the holy garments with my earthliness. Conrad of Courtland, Bishop and Cardinal, died out there among the breakers.
"He will never go to Rome, never kneel at the tombs of the Apostles. From this day forth he is a servitor, a servant of servants in the train of the Duchess Joan. Save those with us here, our hostess and the three captains (who for your sake will hold their peace), none know that Conrad of Courtland escaped the waters that swallowed up his companions. They and you will keep the secret. This shaven crown will speedily thatch itself again, a beard grow upon these shaveling cheeks. A dash of walnut juice, and who will guess that under the tan of Conrad the serf there is concealed a prince of Holy Church?"
He paused, almost smiling. The picture of his renunciation had grown real to him even as he spoke. But Joan did not smile. She waited a space to see if he had aught further to say. But he was silent, waiting for her answer.
"Conrad," she said very gently, "that I have listened to you, and that I have not been angry, may be deadly sin for us both. Yet I cannot be angry. God forgive me! I have tried and I cannot be angry. And why should I? Even as I lay a babe in the cradle, I was wedded. If a woman must suffer, she ought at least to be permitted to choose the instrument of her torture."
"It is verity," he replied; "you are no more true wife than I am true priest."