"Don't exert yourself too much, Mrs. Googe, but if you can tell me whom you mean, to whom you have applied, it might help me to act understandingly."

"To his aunt--I went last night."

"Mrs. Champney?"

She closed her eyes and made a motion of a.s.sent.

"And she will do nothing?"

"No."

"I fail to understand this. Surely she might give of her abundance to save one who is of her own blood. Would it do any good, do you think, for me to see her? I'll gladly go."

She shook her head. "You don't understand."

He waited in silence for some further word; for her to open her eyes at least. But none was forthcoming; the eyes remained closed. After a while he said gently:

"Perhaps I might understand, if you felt willing to tell me, if the effort is not too great."

She opened her eyes and fixed them apathetically on the strong helpful face.

"I wonder if you could understand--I don't know--you're not a woman--"

"No, but I am human, Mrs. Googe; and human sympathy is a great enlightener."

"The weight here--and here!" She raised one hand to her head, the other she laid over her heart. "If I could get rid of that for one hour--I should be strong again--to live--to endure."

Father Honore was silent. He knew the long pent stream of grief and misery must flow in its own channel when once it should burst its bounds.

"My son must never know--you will give me your word?"

"I give you my word, Mrs. Googe."

She leaned forward from her pillows, looked anxiously at the door, which was open into the hall, then whispered:

"She said--my son was Louis Champney's--b.a.s.t.a.r.d;--_you_ don't believe it, do you?"

For the s.p.a.ce of a second Father Honore shrank within himself. He could not tell at that moment whether he had here to do with an overwrought brain, with a mind obsessed, or with an awful fact. But he answered without hesitation and out of his inmost conviction:

"No, I do not believe it, Mrs. Googe."

"I thought you wouldn't--Octavius didn't." She sighed profoundly as if relieved from pain. "That's why she hates me--why she will not help."

"In that case I will go to Mr. Van Ostend. I asked to see you that I might tell you this."

"Will you--oh, will you?" She sighed again--a sigh of great physical relief, for she placed her hand again over her heart, pressing it hard.

"That helps here," she said, pa.s.sing her other hand over her forehead; "perhaps I can tell you now, before you go--perhaps it will help more."

Her voice grew stronger with every full breath she was now able to draw.

Gradually a look of comprehension replaced the apathetic stare. She looked squarely at the priest for the first time since his entrance.

Father Honore could but wonder if the thought behind that look would find adequate expression.

"You haven't said 'G.o.d' to me once since that--that night. Don't speak to me about Him now, will you? He's too far away--it doesn't mean anything to me."

"Mrs. Googe, there comes a time in most lives when G.o.d seems so far away that we can find Him only through the Human;--perhaps such a time has come in your life."

"I don't know; I never thought much about that. But--my G.o.d was human, oh, for so many years!--I loved Louis Champney."

Again there was a long inhalation and exhalation. It seemed as if each admission, which she forced herself to make, loosened more and more the tension of the long-racked nerves; as a result the muscles of the throat relaxed, the articulation grew distinct, the voice stronger.

"--And he loved me--better than life itself. I was so young when it began--only sixteen. My husband's father took me into his home then to bring up; I was an orphan. And Louis Champney loved me then and always--but Almeda Googe, my husband's sister, loved him too--in her way. Her own father could do nothing with her awful will--it crushed everybody that came in contact with it--that opposed it; it crushed me--and in the end, Louis."

She took a little of the lemonade to moisten her lips and went on:

"She was twelve years older than he. She took him when he was in college; worked on him, lied to him about me; told him I loved her brother; worked backwards, forwards, underhanded--any way to influence him against me and get her hold upon him. He went to Europe; she followed; wrote lying letters to her brother--said she was engaged to be married to Louis before her return; told Louis I was going to marry her brother, Warren Googe--in the end she had her way, and always has had it, and will have it. I married Warren Googe; she was forty when she married Louis at twenty-eight."

She paused, straightened herself. Something like animation came into her face.

"It does me good to speak--at last. I've never spoken in all these years--and I can tell you. My child was born seven months after my husband's death. Louis Champney came to see me then--up here, in this room; it was the first time we had dared to see each other alone--but the baby lay beside me; _that kept us_. He said but little; but he took up the child and looked at him; then he turned to me. 'This should have been our son, Aurora,' he said, and I--oh, what will you think of me!"

She dropped her head into her hands.

"I knew in my heart that during all those months I was carrying Warren Googe's child, I had only one thought: 'Oh, if it were only Louis' and mine!' And because I was a widow, I felt free to dwell upon that one thought night and day. Louis' face was always before me. I came in thought to look upon him as the true father of my boy--not that other for whom I had had no love. And I took great comfort in that thought--and--and--my boy is the living image of Louis Champney."

She withdrew her hands, clasping them nervously and rubbing them in each other.

"Oh, I sinned, I sinned in thought, and I've been punished, but there was never anything more--and last night I had to hear that from her!"

For a moment the look of deadly fear returned to the eyes, but only for a moment; her hands continued to work nervously.

"Never anything more; only that day when he took my boy in his arms and said what he did, we both knew we could not see much of each other for the rest of our lives--that's why I've kept so much to myself. He kissed the baby then, laid him in my arms and, stooping, kissed me once--only once--I've lived on that--and said: 'I will do all I can for this boy.'

And--and"--her lips trembled for the first time--"that little baby, as it lay on my breast, saved us both. It was renunciation--but it made me hard; it killed Louis.

"I saw Louis seldom and always in the presence of my boy. But Almeda Champney was not satisfied with what she had done; she transferred her jealousy to my son. She was jealous of every word Louis spoke to him; jealous of every hour he was with him. When Louis died, still young--my son was left unprovided for. That was Almeda Champney's work--she wouldn't have it.

"Then I sold the first quarry for means to send Champney to college; and I sold the rest in order to start him well in business, in the world.

But I know that at the bottom of my ambition for him, was the desire that he might succeed in spite of the fact that his aunt had kept from him the property which Louis Champney intended to be his. My ambition has been overweening for Champney's material success--I have urged him on, when I should have restrained. I have aided him to the extent of my ability to attain his end. I longed to see him in a position that, financially, would far out-shine hers. I felt it would compensate in part. I loved my son--and I loved in him Louis Champney. I alone am to blame for what has come of it--I--his mother."

Her lips trembled excessively. She waited to control them before she could continue.

"Last night, when I begged her to help me, she answered me with what I told you. I could bear no more--"

She leaned back on the pillows, exhausted for a while with her great effort, but the light of renewed life shone from every feature.

"I am better now," she said, turning to Father Honore the dark hollow eyes so full of grat.i.tude that the priest looked away from her.

While this page in human history was being laid open before him, Father Honore said nothing. The confession it contained was so awful in its still depths of pure pa.s.sion, so far-reaching in its effects on a human soul, that he felt suddenly the utter insignificance of his own existence, the futility of all words, the meagreness of all sympathetic expression. And he was honest enough to withhold all attempt at such.