"She has no kindred left that would receive her," he said; "and to send
her to be scorned and disciplined by a community of nuns--never!"
"But her soul!" I said, "and yours?"
"The blessed Lord received such," he answered almost fiercely, "before
the Pharisees."
"Such received Him!" I said quietly, "but receiving Him they went and
sinned no more."
"And when did God ever say it was sin for a priest to marry?" he asked;
"not in the Old Testament, for the son of Elkanah the priest and Hannah
ministered before the Lord in the temple, as perhaps our little
Dietrich," he added in a low tone, "ministers before Him in his temple
now. And where in the New Testament do you find it forbidden?"
"The Church forbids it," I said.
"Since when?" he asked. "The subject is too near my heart for me not to
have searched to see. And five hundred years ago, I have read, before
the days of Hildebrand the pope, many a village pastor had his lawful
wife, whom he loved as I love Bertha; for God knows neither she nor I
ever loved another."
"Does this satisfy her conscience?" I asked.
"Sometimes," he replied bitterly, "but only sometimes. Oftener she lives
as one under a curse, afraid to receive any good thing, and bowing to
every sorrow as her bitter desert, and the foretaste of the terrible
retribution to come."
"Whatever is not of faith is sin," I murmured.
"But what will be the portion of those who call what God sanctions sin,"
he said, "and bring trouble and pollution into hearts as pure as hers?"
The woman entered the room as he was speaking, and must have caught his
words, for a deep crimson flushed her pale face. As she turned away, her
whole frame quivered with a suppressed sob. But afterwards, when the
priest left the room, she came up to me and said, looking with her sad,
dark, lustreless eyes at me, "You were saying that some doubt the
efficacy of these indulgences? But do _you_? I cannot trust _him_," she
added softly, "he would be afraid to tell me if he thought so."
I hesitated what to say. I could not tell an untruth; and before those
searching, earnest eyes, any attempt at evasion would have been vain.
"You do _not_ believe this letter can do anything for me," she said;
"_nor do I_." And moving quietly to the hearth, she tore the indulgence
into shreds, and threw it on the flames.
"Do not tell him this," she said; "he thinks it comforts me."
I tried to say some words about repentance and forgiveness being free to
all.
"Repentance for me," she said, "would be to leave him, would it not?"