"I have been telling her that I love her!" answered Conrad simply. He felt that what he had listened to gave this woman a right to be answered.
"And what, I pray you, have princes of Holy Church to do with love? They seek after heavenly things, do they not? Like the angels, they neither marry nor are given in marriage."
"I know," said Conrad humbly, and without taking the least offence. "I know it well. But I have put off the armour I had not proven. The burden is too great for me. I am a soldier—I was trained a soldier—yet because I was born after my brother Louis, I must perforce become both priest and cardinal. Rather a thousand times would I be a man-at-arms and carry a pike!"
"Then am I to understand that as a soldier you told the Duchess Joan that you loved her, and that as a priest you forbade the banns? Or did you wholly forget the little circumstance that once on a time you yourself married her to your brother?"
"I did indeed forget," said Conrad, with sincere penitence; "yet you must not blame me too sorely. I was carried out of myself——"
"The Duchess, then, rejected your suit with contumely?"
Conrad was silent.
"How should a great lady listen to her husband's brother—and he a priest?" Theresa went on remorseless. "What said the Lady Joan when you told her that you loved her?"
"The words she spoke I cannot repeat, but when she ended I set my lips to her garment's hem as reverently as ever to holy bread."
The slow smile came again over the face of Theresa von Lynar, the smile of a warworn veteran who watches the children at their drill.