“Madame,” she said, “hard words do not bring us into Heaven. I have never been what you would have me pretend to be. And the woman, Marpasse, stood by me, and was my friend. She has a good heart, and for me, that covers a multitude of sins.” Ursula, cold fool, was instantly affronted. “What!” and she seemed to smack her lips with unction, “you, who have worn the scarlet, speak thus insolently to me! It is plain that you have no sense of shame. Hard words indeed are what you need, young woman, the bread of bitterness and the waters of affliction. Pity for your soul moves me to speak the truth.” The flush had faded from Denise’s face. She lay there very pale and still, as though suffering Ursula’s harsh words to pass over her like the wind. “How is it, madame,” she said at last, “that you believe so much that is bad of me?” Ursula had her answer ready, the answer such a woman was destined to produce. “Earl Simon’s knight warned me, as was but right and honest.” “Aymery!” “Sir Aymery, would be more fitting. It was he who besought me to take you in, knowing your misery, and the madness that sin must create in the mind. Pray to God that he may be blessed for snatching you from the devil, and for bringing you here, where, Heaven being willing, we will humble and chasten you.” Denise lay there as though Ursula had taken Marpasse’s knife and stricken her, this time to the heart. She had nothing to say to the Prioress. The woman’s hard morality had broken and bruised her re-born pride and hope. Ursula rose, and stood beside the bed. “Let the knowledge of sin and of humiliation sink into your heart,” she said. And never did woman speak truer or more brutal words. When Ursula had gone, Denise lay in a kind of stupor, mute, wondering, like one who has been wounded and knows not why. All her dreams were in the dust. Ursula, the iconoclast, had broken the frail images of tenderness, mystery, and compassion. Aymery had said this of her? Denise had no strength for the moment to believe it otherwise. And so she lay there, humiliated indeed, very lonely, and without hope. There was no bitterness in her at first, for the shock that had destroyed her vision of a new world, had left her weak and weary. She thought of Aymery with pitiful yearning and wounded wonder, and with the wish that he had suffered her to die. Marpasse alone might have comforted Denise in that hour of her defeat. CHAPTER XXXIV