around furtively—"whether it was sorcery given her by the Evil One or no I cannot tell, but there was such a look in her eyes—ah, Madonna, she has a fearful beauty!—that when they bade me scourge her for contamacy, the lash dropped from my hands, I was as one paralysed. I could not. I could not!"
With a cry as though the scourge fell on him, cutting into the livid flesh, Erceldoune sprang to his feet; his hands fell on the Cistercian's shoulders swaying him to and fro.
"Scourged her?—scourged her? O God! they never dared"
"I dared not," muttered the Umbrian, sorely in fear; "they were bitter upon me, but they did not force it—then. She will have the punishment tomorrow, if she have not yielded"
"Yielded to what?"
"Yielded to the persuasions of the Church, my son."
Erceldoune flung him off with a force that made the Umbrian's blood run cold.
"Yielded to the passions of Giulio Villaflor, you mean! You hell-hounds!—you fiends!"
His voice choked in his throat; the muscles of his chest, where the fishing-shirt was open,
