His eyes were on Denise’s face again, and he smiled as a man smiles with bitter tenderness at death. “Tell me what you know.” Marpasse plodded along, staring at the grass. And presently she had told Aymery all that Denise had told her, and told it with the blunt pathos of a rough woman telling the truth. They were nearing the convent now with its grey walls and trees, its barns and outhouses with their dark hoods of thatch. Aymery’s face was grim and thoughtful. He touched Denise’s hair with his lips, and Marpasse saw the kiss and, being a woman, she understood. “The devil snatched at her lording,” she said, “but God knows that she was not the devil’s, either in heart or in body.” Aymery rode on with bowed head. He was thinking of Gaillard, and how he would follow that man to the end of the world, and kill him for the death he had brought upon Denise. They came to the convent, and Marpasse sat down on a rough bench outside the gate. The portress was waiting there, a very old woman with a dry, wrinkled face, a harsh voice, and grey hairs on her chin. She screwed up her eyes at the knight, and at the burden that he carried in his arms. Aymery was blunt and speedy with her, a man not to be gainsaid. “Peace to you,” he said, “soul and body are hurt here. Go and tell your Prioress that we are in need.” He rode into the court, though a most sensitive etiquette might have forbidden an armed man to ride into such a place. The portress went her way with a hobbling excitement that was very worldly. Presently Ursula the Prioress came out, and two nuns with her and since Aymery held out Denise to the women they could not let him drop her upon the stones. CHAPTER XXXII Ursula the Prioress was a prim woman, a woman with a long, thin face, and a small mouth. She had no knowledge of life, but being very devout and religious, her devotion and her religiosity made her conceive infallibility within herself. Ursula had seen nothing more in Denise than a young woman with gorgeous hair, a deathly face, and blood upon her bosom, and Ursula’s nostrils had caught a rank flavour of godlessness from the affair. The woman had stabbed herself or been stabbed. She was probably nothing more than a common courtesan, for Ursula had a vague knowledge that the sisterhood of Rahab still existed. And like many religious women, Ursula was very sure of her own cleanliness, and very suspicious of the cleanliness of others.