'Would you read it for me? I have rather a headache to-day.'

He read it with a somewhat embarra.s.sed voice. She lay listening, with her eyes closed under her large hat, each hand trying to prevent the trembling of the other.

A strange pride swelled in her. It was a kind and manly letter, expressing far more personal sympathy with Benecke than Manisty had ever yet allowed himself--a letter wholly creditable indeed to the writer, and marked with a free and flowing beauty of phrase that brought home to Eleanor at every turn his voice, his movements, the ideas and sympathies of the writer.

Towards the end came the familiar Manisty-ism:

'All the same, their answer to you is still as good as ever. The system must either break up or go on. They naturally prefer that it should go on.

But if it is worked by men like you, it cannot go on. Their instinct never wavers; and it is a true one.'

Then:

'I don't know how I have managed to write this letter--poor stuff as it is.

My mind at this moment is busy neither with speculation nor politics. I am perched for the night on the side of a mountain thickly covered with beech woods, in a remote Calabrian hamlet, where however last year some pushing person built a small 'health resort,' to which a few visitors come from Naples and even from Rome. The woods are vast, the people savage. The brigands are gone, or going; of electric light there is plenty. I came this morning, and shall be gone to-morrow. I am a pilgrim on the face of Italy. For six weeks I have wandered like this, from the Northern Abruzzi downwards. Wherever holiday folk go to escape from the heat of the plains, I go. But my object is not theirs.... Nor is it yours, Padre. There are many quests in the world. Mine is one of the oldest that man knows. My heart pursues it, untired. And in the end I shall win to my goal.'

The old priest read the last paragraph in a hurried, unsteady voice. At every sentence he became aware of some electrical effect upon the delicate frame and face beside him; but he read on--not knowing how to save himself--lest she should think that he had omitted anything.

When he dropped the letter his hands, too, shook. There was a silence.

Slowly Eleanor dragged herself higher in her chair; she pushed her hat back from her forehead; she turned her white drawn face upon the priest.

'Father,' she said, bending towards him, 'you are a priest--and a confessor?'

His face changed. He waited an instant before replying.

'Yes, Madame--I am!' he said at last, with a firm and pa.s.sionate dignity.

'Yet now you cannot act as a priest. And I am not a Catholic. Still, I am a human being--with a soul, I suppose--if there are such things!--and you are old enough to be my father, and have had great experience. I am in trouble--and probably dying. Will you hear my case--as though it were a confession--under the same seal?'

She fixed her eyes upon him. Insensibly the priest's expression had changed; the priestly caution, the priestly instinct had returned. He looked at her steadily and compa.s.sionately.

'Is there no one, Madame, to whom you might more profitably make this confession--no one who has more claim to it than I?'

'No one.'

'I cannot refuse,' he said, uneasily. 'I cannot refuse to hear anyone in trouble and--if I can--to help them. But let me remind you that this could not be in any sense a true confession. It could only be a conversation between friends.'

She drew her hand across her eyes.

'I must treat it as a confession, or I cannot speak. I shall not ask you to absolve me. That--that would do me no good,' she said, with a little wild laugh, 'What I want is direction--from some one accustomed to look at people as they are--and--and to speak the truth to them. Say "yes," Padre.

You--you may have the fate of three lives in your hands.'

Her entreating eyes hung upon him. His consideration took a few moments longer. Then he dropped his own look upon the ground, and clasped his hands.

'Say, my daughter, all that you wish to say.'

The priestly phrase gave her courage.

She drew a long breath, and paused a little to collect her thoughts. When she began, it was in a low, dragging voice full of effort.

'What I want to know, Father, is--how far one may fight--how far one _should_ fight--for oneself. The facts are these. I will not mention any names. Last winter, Father, I had reason to think that life had changed for me--after many years of unhappiness. I gave my whole, whole heart away.'

The words came out in a gasp, as though a large part of the physical power of the speaker escaped with them. 'I thought that--in return--I was held in high value, in true affection--that--that my friend cared for me more than for anyone else--that in time he would be mine altogether. It was a great hope, you understand--I don't put it at more. But I had done much to deserve his kindness--he owed me a great deal. Not, I mean, for the miserable work I had done for him; but for all the love, the thought by day and night that I had given him.'

She bowed her head on her hands for a moment. The priest sat motionless and she resumed, torn and excited by her strange task.

'I was not alone in thinking and hoping--as I did. Other people thought it.

It was not merely presumptuous or foolish on my part. But--ah! it is an old story, Padre. I don't know why I inflict it on you!'

She stopped, wringing her hands.

The priest did not raise his eyes, but sat quietly--in an att.i.tude a little cold and stern, which seemed to rebuke her agitation. She composed herself, and resumed:

'There was of course some one else, Father--you understood that from the beginning--some one younger, and far more attractive than I. It took five weeks--hardly so much. There was no affinity of nature and mind to go upon--or I thought so. It seemed to me all done in a moment by a beautiful face. I could not be expected to bear it--to resign myself at once to the loss of everything that made life worth living--could I, Father?' she said pa.s.sionately.

The priest still did not look up.

'You resisted?' he said.

'I resisted--successfully,' she said with fluttering breath. 'I separated them. The girl who supplanted me was most tender, dear, and good. She pitied me, and I worked upon her pity. I took her away from--from my friend. And why should I not? Why are we called upon perpetually to give up--give up? It seemed to me such a cruel, cold, un-human creed. I knew my own life was broken--beyond mending; but I couldn't bear the unkindness--I couldn't forgive the injury--I couldn't--couldn't! I took her away; and my power is still great enough, and will be always great enough, if I choose, to part these two from each other!'

Her hands were on her breast, as though she were trying to still the heart that threatened to silence her. When she spoke of giving up, her voice had taken a note of scorn, almost of hatred, that brought a momentary furrow to the priest's brow.

For a little while after she had ceased to speak he sat bowed, and apparently deep in thought. When he looked up she braced herself, as though she already felt the shock of judgment. But he only asked a question.

'Your girl-friend, Madame--her happiness was not involved?'

Eleanor shrank and turned away.

'I thought not--at first.' It was a mere murmur.

'But now?'

'I don't know--I suspect,' she said miserably. 'But, Father, if it were so she is young; she has all her powers and chances before her. What would kill me would only--antic.i.p.ate--for her--a day that must come. She is born to be loved.'

Again she let him see her face, convulsed by the effort for composure, the eyes shining with large tears. It was like the pleading of a wilful child.

A veil descended also on the pure intense gaze of the priest, yet he bent it steadily upon her.

'Madame--G.o.d has done you a great honour.'

The words were just breathed, but they did not falter. Mutely, with parted lips, she seemed to search for his meaning.

'There are very few of whom G.o.d condescends to ask, as plainly, as generously, as He now asks of you. What does it matter, Madame, whether G.o.d speaks to us amid the thorns or the flowers? But I do not remember that He ever spoke among the flowers, but often--often, amongst deserts and wildernesses. And when He speaks--Madame! the condescension, the gift is that He should speak at all; that He, our Maker and Lord, should plead with, should as it were humble Himself to, our souls. Oh! how we should hasten to answer, how we should hurry to throw ourselves and all that we have into His hands!'

Eleanor turned away. Unconsciously she began to strip the moss from a tree beside her. The tears dropped upon her lap.

But the appeal was to religious emotion, not to the moral judgment, and she rallied her forces.

'You speak, Father, as a priest--as a Christian. I understand of course that that is the Christian language, the Christian point of view.'