I tell you that rather than fall into the hands of the Paynims, I will dare that sin and leave them nothing but the vile mould which once held the spirit of a woman." And she laid her hand upon the dagger hilt that was hidden in her robe.
Then again the abbess spoke.
"To you, daughter, I cannot forbid the deed, but to those who have fully sworn to obey me I do forbid it, and to them I show another if a more piteous way of escape from the last shame of womanhood.

Some of us are old and withered, and have naught to fear but death, but others are still young and fair.

To these I say, when the end is nigh, let them take steel and score face and bosom and seat themselves here in this chapel, red with their own blood and made loathsome to the sight of man.

Then will the end come upon them quickly, and they will pass hence unstained to be the brides of Heaven." Now a great groan of horror went up from those miserable women, who already saw themselves seated in stained robes, and hideous to behold, there in the carved chairs of their choir, awaiting death by the swords of furious and savage men, as in a day to come their sisters of the Faith were to await it in the doomed convent of the Virgins of St.Clare at Acre.* [* Those who are curious to know the story of the end of those holy heroines, the Virgins of St.Clare, I think in the year 1291, may read it in my book, "A Winter Pilgrimage," pp.

270 and 271--AUTHOR.] Yet one by one, except the aged among them, they came up to the abbess and swore that they would obey her in this as in everything, while the abbess said that herself she would lead them down that dreadful road of pain and mutilation.