‘I could listen to him,’ she said.

’You would not need—­except, yes, one thing.  Your father’s book speaks of not forgiving an injury.’

’My father does.  He thinks it weakness to forgive an injury.  Women do, and are disgraced, they are thought slavish.  My brother is much stronger than I am.  He is my father alive in that.’

‘It is anti-Christian, some would think.’

’Let offending people go.  He would not punish them.  They may go where they will be forgiven.  For them our religion is a happy retreat; we are glad they have it.  My father and my brother say that injury forbids us to be friends again.  My father was injured by the English Admiralty:  he never forgave it; but he would have fought one of their ships and offered his blood any day, if his country called to battle.’

‘You have the same feeling, you mean.’

’I am a woman.  I follow my brother, whatever he decides.  It is not to say he is the enemy of persons offending him; only that they have put the division.’

‘They repent?’

‘If they do, they do well for themselves.’

‘You would see them in sackcloth and ashes?’

‘I would pray to be spared seeing them.’

‘You can entirely forget—­well, other moments, other feelings?’

‘They may heighten the injury.’

‘Carinthia, I should wish to speak plainly, if I could, and tell you....’

‘You speak quite plainly, my lord.’

‘You and I cannot be strangers or enemies.’

‘We cannot be, I would not be.  To be friends, we should be separate.’

’You say you are a woman; you have a heart, then?’—­for, if not, what have you? was added in the tone.

‘My heart is my brother’s,’ she said.

‘All your heart?’

‘My heart is my brother’s until one of us drops.’

‘There is not another on earth beside your brother Chillon?’

‘There is my child.’

The dwarf square tower of Croridge village church fronted them against the sky, seen of both.

‘You remember it,’ he said; and she answered:  ‘I was married there.’

‘You have not forgotten that injury, Carinthia?’

‘I am a mother.’

’By all the saints! you hit hard.  Justly.  Not you.  Our deeds are the hard hitters.  We learn when they begin to flagellate, stroke upon stroke!  Suppose we hold a costly thing in the hand and dash it to the ground—­no recovery of it, none!  That must be what your father meant.  I can’t regret you are a mother.  We have a son, a bond.  How can I describe the man I was!’ he muttered,—­’possessed! sort of werewolf!  You are my wife?’

‘I was married to you, my lord.’

‘It’s a tie of a kind.’

‘It binds me.’

‘Obey, you said.’

‘Obey it.  I do.’

‘You consider it holy?’

’My father and my mother spoke to me of the marriage-tie.  I read the service before I stood at the altar.  It is holy.  It is dreadful.  I will be true to it.’