Then went Maud Lindesay to her and set her hand about her neck, and
kissed her, saying: "Do not be sorry any more. Confess to the minister
of God. I also have sinned and been sorry. Yet after came forgiveness
and the unbound heart."
Then the Lady Sybilla ceased quickly and looked up, as it had been,
smiling. Yet she was not smiling as maidens are wont to smile.
"Pretty innocent," she said, "you mean well, but you know not what the
word 'sin' means to such as I. Confess--absolve! Not even the Holy One
and the Just could give me that. I tell you I have eaten of the apple
of the knowledge of good and evil--yes, the very core I have eaten. I
have the taste of innocent blood upon my lips. I have seen the axe
fall, the axe which I put into the headsman's hands. I am condemned,
and that justly. But one of you shall live to taste sweet love, and
the crown of life, and to feel the innocent lips of children at her
breasts. And the other--but enough. Farewell. Fear not. God, who has
been cruel in all else, has given your lives to Sybilla de Thouars,
ere in His own time He strike that guilty one with His thunderbolt.
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