"Believe me, I think you just as pure as if you had never been married at all." She looked up at him, surprised, her hands still folded in her lap, her dark eyes wide. "I am delighted to hear that. But"--she cast her eyes down and smiled faintly--"does that mean there is to be nothing at all between us?" "I love you!" Simon declared. "I will always love you. I think of you night and day. I beg you to love me in return." "Oh, Simon. How beautiful." She held out her arms to him. But he stayed where he was and raised his hands warningly. "I mean to love you according to the commandments of l'amour courtois. With every fiber of my being I yearn to be altogether yours, but you must restrain me." "I must?" "You must be what the poets of old Languedoc called 'mi dons'--my lord. You must rule me. One day we will join together in body, but only after I have been tested and found worthy." "Is that what courtly love means?" "Yes, and that is why it is more beautiful than marriage. Husband and wife may embrace carnally the moment the priest says the words over them. No, they are _required_ to. Courtly lovers know each other only when love has fully prepared the way, so that their coming together may be a moment of perfect beauty." Sophia looked at him silently. Her face was suddenly unreadable. "Do you understand?" he asked after he had stood awhile gazing into her lustrous brown eyes. "These ideas are perhaps new to you." "The woman is ruler of the man?" "Yes." The corners of her mouth quirked. "Then what if I were to command you to get into this bed with me?" He was certain from her sly smile that she was joking. But he could think of no clever answer. He considered what he had read, what he had been told, what he had done with other women. None of it helped. The women who fell into bed with him on the first tryst had not been serious about love, nor had he been. In all the lore of l'amour courtois the woman made the man wait--sometimes for years, sometimes for his entire life--and the man was happy to wait, and that was all there was to it. Then he remembered something his mother had said, a secret so precious he would never tell anyone, not even Sophia. Not even Friar Mathieu needed to know it. But it guided Simon now. _The first time your father and I were alone together I wanted him then and there. But he was strong enough for both of us. It was a whole year before we possessed each other in body. And you came of that union._ "You will not command me so," he said with cheerful confidence. Her eyebrows rose--they were strong and dark, like a raven's wings. "Indeed?" "Because you know how much better it would be to wait. We both want each other now. But if we restrain that hunger, it will grow. It will be not just a desire of the flesh, but a longing of the spirit. It is said that the souls in paradise know no greater happiness than two lovers do, who are united in soul as well as body."