“I think not. The nuns do not like me overwell. Meeting the beggars is my one permitted diversion. They are quite content to leave me to chatter in the cold with mendicants. We can converse a little longer.” Then she took my right hand firmly in hers. “Now let us reason together bravely and soberly, for we are not a silly wench and a silly hind to pawn our souls for a moment of evil passion, nor am I the first nun to beat out her life like a caught sparrow on the bars of its cage, caught as I was by a hope that was vain, and a life that cannot satisfy.” “Brave and sober we must be,” I asserted, “and what we do we shall do clear-eyed, and in sight of God and His angels. But tell me once again, for my ears long for it, do you truly love me?” “Till eternity cease to be, I love you.” And there beneath that cold winter sky, she put her face to the bars of the grille, and I kissed her, the black veil touching my cheek as I did so. Playing with fire indeed! “Ei!” she cried with a flash of her old-time vivacity, “I have given my lips to a pretty beggar.” “Now,” I said, very slowly, “come weal, come woe, come separation, come union; few things can truly matter. God is above us. Life is short, eternity long, and convents are not, nor vows in the vast Hereafter.” She let go my hand. We stood facing one another. A merciful Providence still left us uninterrupted, and by great good fortune there were no windows overlooking the grille. Then I told her how night by night I saw her in my dreams, and ever as my wife. And as I spoke I saw that she was marvelling. “But Walter,” spoke she, “now these many nights I have dreamed ever the same; it has been always in the Regenstein, the dear Regenstein, which I can see on clear days from the convent windows, and you were always with me, and folk called me ‘wife’ and ‘mother.’ How, how can these things be? God spoke once in dreams, to Samuel, to Peter, to Paul, and are they but fleeting phantoms now?” “I cannot tell,” I answered. “I could speak from the lore of the pagan Greeks and Latins, but to what profit? Yet know this. I am Graf von Regenstein, and my men will follow me. Say but the word, and I will have you out of Quedlinburg convent by mild means or violent, and hold you safe in the castle against all the thunders of the Church.” She shook her head. “You are jesting, Walter, I know it. I must come to you only as your honored bride. There is no hope thus. We could not live at peace in all Christendom. Perchance we might flee to the uttermost isles--those isles of the vast blue deep they say the Spaniards found--where golden fruits hang on the trees, and summer never ends. There we might indeed be beyond the reproach of men, but, tell me, would we be beyond the reproach of God?” I reached through the grille and regained her hand.