Will it please you to appoint me a penance, if such an act can indeed be expiated ?" "The sin, my daughter, as I will presently explain, is scarcely so great as you think it.

But, such as it is, it arose from a lack of calmness and of that mental equipoise which sails unruffled through a sea of contradiction.

The irritability which results in displays of sudden temper is so foreign to your nature that it points to your having passed through a time of very special strain, both mental and physical; probably overlong vigils and fastings, while you wrestled with this anxious problem upon which so much, in the future, depends.
"As you ask me for penance, I will give you two: one which will set right your ill-considered action; the other which will help to remedy the cause of that action.
"The first is, that you place these fragments together and, taking a fresh piece of vellum, make a careful copy of this writing which you destroyed.
"The second is that, in order to regain the usual equipoise of your mental attitude, you ride to-day, for an hour, in the river meadow.

My white palfrey, Iconoklastes, shall be in the courtyard at noon.
Yesterday, my daughter, you rode for pleasure.

To-day you will ride for penance; and incidentally"-- an irrepressible little smile crept round the corners of the Bishop's mouth, and twinkled in his eyes--"incidentally, my daughter, you will work off a certain stiffness from which you must be suffering, after the unwonted exercise.