He did not doubt her, or wing his shaft with anything but brutality. It was his coward way, and, having asserted it, he strolled off, grinning and whistling, to the fountain. Bona shivered and drew herself up. Her robe was all of daffodil, with a writhed golden hem to it that looked like a long flicker of flame. On her forehead, between wings of auburn hair, burned a great emerald. She seemed to Bernardo the loveliest, most gracious thing, a vision personified of fruitfulness, the golden angel of maternity, warm, fragrant, kind-bosomed. He met the gaze of her eyes with wonderment, but no fear. ’Sweet Madonna,’ he said, ’hail me nothing, I pray thee, but the clear herald of our Christ—His mouthpiece and recorder. We may all be played upon for truth, so we be pure of heart.’ ’And that art thou? No guile? No duplicity? No self-interest?’ He marvelled. She looked at him earnestly. ’Bernardo, didst know this Tassino was my servant?’ ’Nay, I knew it not.’ ’Wouldst have spared him hadst thou known?’ ’How could I spare him the truth?’ ’But its shame, its punishment?’ ’Greater shame could no man have than to debauch innocence. His punishment was his redemption.’ ’Ah! I defend him not. Yet, bethink thee, she may have been the temptress?’ ’He should have loathed, not loved her, then.’ ’Madreperla, mother-of-pearl,’ cried Catherine, with a little shriek of laughter, from the fountain; ’come and help me! I have caught a butterfly in my hand, and my father wishes to take it from me and kill it!’ *CHAPTER VII* Bernardo wrote to the Abbot of San Zeno:— ’MOST DEAR AND HONOURED FATHER,—Many words from me would but dilute the wonder of my narrative. Also thou lovest brevity in all things but God’s praise. Know, then, how I have surpassed expectation in the early propagation of our creed, which is by Love to banish Law, that old engine of necessarianism. [_Here follows a brief recapitulation of the events which had landed him, a little sweet oracle of light, in the dark old castello of Milanl._] Man’ (he goes on) ’is of all creatures the most susceptible to his environments. Thou shalt induce him but to feed on the olive branches of Peace in order that he may take their colour. O sorrow, then, on the false appetites which have warped his nature! on the beastly doctrines which, Satan-engendered, have led him half to believe there is no wrong or right, but only necessity! Is there no such thing as discord in music, at which even a dog will howl? Harmony is God—so plain. Yet there is a learned doctor here, one Lascaris who disputeth this. My father, I do not think that learned doctors seek so much the intrinsic truth of things as to impress their followers with their perspicacity in the pursuit. John led James over-the-way by a "short cut" of three miles, and James thought John a very clever fellow. Pray for me!...