“Well, if it comes to second-bests,” said Cadfael,“they can be found outside the cloister as well as within.Managing the business your fathers built up, providing employmentfor so many people, is itself a sufficient justification for alife, for want of better.”

“It does not put me to any great test,” she saidindifferently. “Ah, well, I said only that I had beenthinking of quitting the world. Nothing is done, as yet. Andwhether or no, I shall be glad to talk with Sister Magdalen, for Ido value her wit, and know better than to discard unconsideredwhatever she may say. Let me know when she comes, and I will sendand bid her to my house, or go to her wherever she islodged.”

She rose to take the jar of ointment from him. Standing, she wasthe breadth of two fingers taller than he, but thin andslender-boned. The coils of her hair would have seemed over-heavyif she had not carried her head so nobly.

“Your roses are budding well,” she said, as he wentout with her along the gravel path from the workshop.“However late they come, they always bloom equally in theend.”

It could have been a metaphor for the quality of a life, hethought, as they had been discussing it. But he did not say so.Better leave her to the shrewd and penetrating wisdom of SisterMagdalen. “And yours?” he said. “There’llbe a choice of blooms when Saint Winifred’s feast comesround. You should have the best and freshest for yourfee.”

The most fleeting of smiles crossed her face, and left hersombre again, her eyes on the path. “Yes,” she said,and nothing more, though it seemed there should have been more. Wasit possible that she had noted and been troubled by the sametrouble that haunted Eluric? Three times he had carried the roserent to her, a matter of… how long… in her presence?Two minutes annually? Three, perhaps? But no man’s shadowclouded Judith Perle’s eyes, no living man’s. Shemight, none the less, have become somehow aware, thought Cadfael,not of a young man’s physical entrance into her house andpresence, but of the nearness of pain.