“Aye, maybe you have heard of it,” said he. “So it was that I felt I could not deny to those poor unfortunates the gifts which God had given me of his free grace. But, ’tis true, I should have enjoined on them to seek forgiveness in the right place—aye, aye—And you, Kristin,—you are in duty bound to confess to your own prior.”
“Nay, but this is a thing I cannot confess to the prior of the convent,” said Kristin.
“Think you it can profit you aught to confess to me what you would hide from your true father confessor,” said the monk more severely.
“If so be you cannot confess me,” said Kristin, “at least you can let me speak with you and ask your counsel about what lies upon my soul.”
The monk looked about him. The church was empty at the moment. Then he sat himself down on a chest which stood in a corner: “You must remember that I cannot absolve you, but I will counsel you, and keep silence as though you had told me in confession.”
Kristin stood up before him and said:
“It is this: I cannot be Simon Darre’s wife.”
“Therein you know well that I can counsel no otherwise than would your own prior,” said Brother Edwin. “To undutiful children God gives no happiness, and your father had looked only to your welfare—that you know full well.”
“I know not what your counsel will be, when you have heard me to the end,” answered Kristin. “Thus stands it now with us: Simon is too good to gnaw the bare branch from which another man has broken the blossom.”
She looked the monk straight in the face. But when she met his eyes and marked how the dry, wrinkled, old face changed, grew full of sorrow and dismay—something seemed to snap within her, tears, started to her eyes, and she would have cast herself upon her knees. But Edwin stopped her hurriedly: