“I suppose so,” agreed Eirene, with considerable hesitation. “But you understand—you know—that whatever happens, Maurice and you are my dear brother and sister, and nothing is to come between us?”
“If anything does, it won’t be on our side,” said Zoe heartily, and immediately wondered whether this was likely to be strictly true.
CHAPTER XIV.
AN EMISSARY.
“It’s a church!” said Eirene, in tones of horror.
“Well, I suppose it was a church once, but it’s only a ruin now,” said Zoe. Another day of climbing had brought them out of the forest, and up to an isolated building standing on the saddle between two mountain-peaks, which they were informed was to be their dwelling for the present.
“But to live in it—it is sacrilege! And they say that we are to sleep behind the ikonostasis!”
“Well, I think it’s rather nice of them. It has a roof, at any rate, and the rest of the church hasn’t much.”
“But it is the sanctuary, where no woman may even set foot! Let us tell them we refuse to enter.”
“And sleep out in the open, I suppose? No, thank you. Why, Eirene, the brigands wouldn’t do anything that they thought would make the saints angry, and they belong to the Greek Church just as much as you do.”
“They? They are miserable schismatics—followers of the upstart heretical church of Thracia, outcasts from Orthodoxy!” cried Eirene.