"Yet even so, it were well you should proceed with caution and with authority; and in this you have none." It was her turn to smile, the palest, ghostliest of smiles, and even for so much she must have been oddly moved.

"I think I have," said she, and quoted, "'If thy right hand offend thee, hack it off.'" I saw a hot flush mount to the friar's prominent cheek-bones.

Indeed, he was a very human man under his conventual robe, with swift stirrings of passion which the long habit of repression had not yet succeeded in extinguishing.

He cast his eyes to the ceiling in such a glance of despair as left me thoughtful.

It was as an invocation to Heaven to look down upon the obstinate, ignorant folly of this woman who accounted herself wise and who so garbled the Divine teaching as to blaspheme with complacency.
I know that now; at the time I was not quite so clear-sighted as to read the full message of that glance.
Her audacity was as the audacity of fools.