“Here is your portion, holy Sister,” she said; “mine the bower, yours the altar. So you see we are all well suited. Come, though, is it not very horrible having to look solemn all day, and to wear a grey gown? I should fade in a week inside such a hood; besides, it makes you look such a colour.”
Igraine could certainly boast a colour at that moment that might have warned the woman of her rising fume. Pelleas broke in and took up the argument.
“Men do not consider dress,” he said; “everything is fair to the comely. I look into a woman’s face and into her eyes, and take the measure of her heart. Such is my catechism.”
“But you like to see rich silks and a smile, and to hear a laugh at times. What is a girl if she is not gay? No discourtesy to you, sister; but you seem so far set from Sir Pelleas and myself.”
Igraine, lacking patience, flared up like a torch. “Ha! mark you,” she said, “my habit makes me no coward, nor do I thieve. No discourtesy to you, my dear lady.”
Morgan set up a thrill of laughter.
“How true a woman is a nun,” quoth she; “but you are too severe, too careful. Thieving, too; why, I may as well have a trinket or so before the place is rifled, even if I take a single ring. And what is more, I have been turned from my own house with hardly a bracelet or a bodkin. Come, Sir Pelleas, let us be going; the Sister would be at her prayers. I see we but hinder her.”
Pelleas had lost both pity and patience in the last minute. Partisanship is inevitable even in the most trivial differences, and Pelleas’s frown was strongly for Morgan la Blanche.
“Perhaps it would be well, madame,” said he, “if we all went on our knees for the day’s deliverance. I cannot see that there is any shame in gratitude.”