After this he began to speak again, still in the same tone of sympathy, but with a subtle difference in the general tenor of his views. He told her, in a manner eloquent with simplicity, of his talk with Laure on the eve of her consecration. He reminded Eleanore that Laure had entered of her own free will upon the life of a nun. He recalled the girl’s contentment throughout the period of her novitiate; and finally, seeing that he had succeeded in obliterating some of the self-reproach in this woman to whom he was so sincerely attached, he began to prepare her for the blow that he was about to deal, to tell her what words could not soften, to inflict a wound that time could not heal, but which, according to the law of the Roman Catholic Church, he was bound to administer. Eleanore listened to his plausibly logical phrases with close attention. She sat there before him, elbow on knee, her head resting on her hand, her eyes wandering over the armor-strewn walls. The Bishop talked around his subject, circling ever a little nearer to its climax; but he was still far from the end when madame, suddenly straightening up and looking full into his eyes, interrupted him to ask baldly: “Monseigneur, hast thou never, in thy heart, known the yearning for a woman’s love?” “Many a time and oft, madame, I have _felt_ love—a deeply reverent love—for woman; and I have rejoiced therein, and given thanks to God,” was the careful reply. But Eleanore had begun her attack, and she would not be repulsed in the first onslaught. “And has no woman, Reverend Father, known thy love?” she demanded. “Madame!” A pale flush overspread St. Nazaire’s face. “That question is not—kind,” he said haltingly, but without rebuke. “Nay. I am not kind now. Make me answer.” St. Nazaire looked at her thoughtfully, and weighed certain things in certain balances. Because of many years of the confessional and also of free confidence he knew Eleanore thoroughly,—knew how she had suffered every soul-torment; knew her unswerving virtue; sympathized with her intense loneliness. He prized her trust in him more than she was aware, and he feared to jeopardize that confidence now by whatever answer he should make. Ignorant of the purport of her questions, he yet saw that she was in terrible earnest in them. So finally he did the honest and straightforward thing. Answering her look, eye for eye, he said slowly: “Yea, Eleanore of Le Crépuscule, a woman hath known my love. What then?” “Then if thou, a good man and as strong as any the Church ever knew, found that to human nature a loveless life is an impossibility, how shouldst thou blame a maid, high-strung, full of youth, vitality, emotions that she has not tried, for yielding to the same temptation before which thou didst fall? How is it right that the Church—that God—should demand so much?—should ask more than His creatures can give?” “Eleanore! Eleanore! thou shalt not question God!”