Honora was lying on a couch in her celestial bedroom. No incense burned. The screen was folded closely about the altar. The windows were open. The pure air of spring, the peaceful sounds of night,—disturbed now and again by the hideous shriek of an engine,—the delicate perfume of flowers, played upon her irritated senses. She held a bottle of smelling salts in her hand. On the table beside her was a jolly looking bottle of Benedictine.

There was a tap at the door. Honora answered wearily. A maid entered.

“It’s Father Connor, miss, and he wants to see you particular.”

“Tell him I cannot see him—no, tell him to come up.”

She rose hurriedly and smoothed her hair. Mr. and Mrs. Peele had gone South. She was alone in the house, and welcomed the brief distraction of the priest’s visit.

“You will pardon me for asking you to come up here,” she said as he entered. “But I am in dishabille, and I did not want to keep you waiting. How kind of you to come!”

“Sure it is always a pleasure to see you anywhere, Miss Mairs,” he said, taking the seat she indicated. “What should I do without you in this godless place?”

Several candles burned. The moonlight wandered in, making a ghastly combination. Honora lay back in her chair, looking very pale and beautiful. The priest’s profile was toward her for a moment after he ceased speaking, a strong lean determined profile. She watched it warily. But he turned suddenly to her and smiled, and told her an absurd episode of one of his village delinquents.

“Faith, Miss Mairs,” he concluded, “you’ve got to help me. They’re too much for one poor priest. I’m not one to flatter, but your face would be enough to make a sinner think of heaven—sure it’s the face of an angel! Between the two of us and with the Grace of God we’ll reform the village and drive the dirty politicians into the Church or out of the country.”

Honora smiled radiantly, and held out her hand. “I will work with you,” she said. “I intend to devote my life to the Church.”

He held her hand closely, in a strong masculine clasp.

“I believed it of you. But why don’t you go to confession, my child?”

The muscles under Honora’s fair skin contracted briefly, and she attempted to withdraw her hand; but the priest held it closely.

“I shall go to you next week.”

“To-night,” he said with soft insistence; “to-night. Do you know it was that brought me here to-night? I’ve been knowing ever since I came that something troubled you—was eating your heart out—but I didn’t like to speak. I thought every day you would come to me, and I didn’t like to intrude. But to-night I said, ‘I will!’ I couldn’t get up my courage when I first came in; but I’m glad I’ve spoken, for I know you’ll be after confessing now. Poor girl! But remember, dear child, the comfort and consolation our blessed Church has for every sinner. Come.”

Honora turned her face away, and shook her head.

The priest put out a long arm, and grasping the screen drew it away from the altar. Then he leaned forward, and laying his hands on her shoulders drew her slowly forward and pressed her to her knees. He laid his hand on her head.

“Confess,” he said, solemnly.

And Honora suddenly burst into wild sobbing, and confessed that Beverly Peele had dropped his own morphine that night, that his shaking hand had refused to obey his will, and that, blind with pain, he had poured a fourth of the contents into the glass, mixed it with water, and gulped it down; that she had not gone to his assistance because she wished him to die, and the responsibility to fall upon his wife.

Then she sprang to her feet and smote her hands together.

“I did not intend to confess until all was over, but—I—Oh—it has been horrible here alone these two days—but I would not yield to superstition and go away—and you found me in a weak moment.”

She walked up and down the room, talking the more rapidly, the more unreservedly, as the priest made no comment. And after all the years of immobility it was joy to speak out everything in her crowded heart and brain.

“Oh, I am not a monster, I am not abnormal, I am merely a result. It began—when did it begin? I was a child when I came here—I remember little that happened before—it has always been the rÔle of the poor cousin, I remember no other—no other! never! never! I had to learn patience at an age when other children are clamouring for their little desires. I had to learn humility when other children—while I watched my cousins take all the goods and joys of childhood as their divine right. While their little world was at their feet I was learning to cringe and watch and wait and smile upon people I hated, and listen to people that bored me to death, and suffer vicariously for all the shortcomings of the Peele family when my aunt was in one of her cold rages. It was early that I learned the lesson that if I would occupy a supportable position in life I must ‘work’ people; I must cultivate will and tact—how I hate the loathsome word—and study the natures of those about me, and play upon them; that I must acquire absolute self repression, be a sort of automaton, that, being once wound up properly, never makes a false move. I believe that was one thing which drove me to the Catholic Church,—the unspeakable relief that I should find in confession,—that and one other thing—”

She paused abruptly, and pressed her hands to her face, to which the blood had sprung.

“I loved Beverly Peele,” she continued violently. “I do not know when it began; when I was old enough to fall in love, I suppose, and that is young enough with a woman. When we were children we used to play at being married. Even after he was grown and was rather wild, he used to come back to me in the summer time and tell me that he cared for no one else. I knew all his faults, his weaknesses, his limitations, mental and moral and spiritual,—none better. But I loved him. I worshipped him. He was not even a companion to me, for I was always intellectually ambitious. Not a taste but music did we have in common. I have seen him in raging tempers that would make any other woman despise him—when he seemed an animal, a savage. But nothing made any difference to me. A woman loves or she does not love—that is the beginning and the end. There is no more relation between cause and effect in an infatuated woman’s mind than—Oh, well, I can’t be finding similes.

“One night he came in here. The next night I kissed the pillow his head would lie on. For a year I was happy; for another I alternated between joy and anguish, jealousy and peace, despair and hope. Then a year of misery, during which he brutally cast me off. It was that which drove me to the Catholic Church—not only the peace it promised, but the knowledge that with baptism my sin would be washed away—for when happiness went remorse began. I have not a brain of iron, like that woman he married. She could snap her past in two and fling it behind her. She could snap her fingers at moral laws, if it suited her purpose, and know no regret, provided she had had nothing to regret meanwhile. That was one reason why I hated her.

“Oh, how I hated her! How I hated her! Beverly never had any reserve, and he made love to her before my eyes. He was infatuated. His affection for me was an incidental fancy compared to his mad passion for that woman. And month after month! Month after month! And I loved him still!

“I never dared say to myself that when the time came I should have vengeance, for such a resolution I should be obliged to confess; and the priest would make me promise to thrust it out, or refuse me absolution. But down in my heart I knew that when the hour came the temptation would conquer. It came first when I let him drink the morphine. And when I saw her in court, when her lover gave me that sudden suggestion, when I knew that I could send her to that horrible chair—” She threw out her arms and laughed hysterically, “O God, I was almost happy again.”

The priest rose and stood before her. There were tears in his eyes.

“Poor woman!” he said. “Poor woman!”

Honora’s face convulsed, but she shut her lips resolutely and tapped the floor with her foot.

“There is pardon and peace in the Church,” he continued softly; “and not only for the sake of that poor girl at Sing Sing, battling to-night with horror and terror, sleepless, listening to the solemn tramp of the death watch, counting the hours that are marching her to that hideous death, but for the future peace of your own soul, speak out and save her. Think of the years of torment, of remorse, when you will not have the excitement of the present, the pressure of your wrongs to sustain you. Speak out, and I will give you absolution, and your soul shall know peace.”

But Honora threw back her head and laughed.

“No! No!” she said. “I am not so weak as that. I have no intention of going to pieces at the last moment. It is only her death that will give me peace.”

He bent his long body backward, drawing himself up to his full imposing height.

“And have you thought of what will be the penalty?” he said, in a low voice, and with an intonation that was almost a chant.

She shuddered, but dragged her eyes away.

“I don’t care!” she said passionately. “I don’t care!”

“You are sure?” he said, in the same voice.

She drew two short breaths. “Oh, go away and leave me,” she said. “Why did you come here? I did not intend to confess until all was over.”

“And you expected absolution?”

“I would have done any penance. I would have burnt my flesh with red-hot irons—”

He gave a short, scornful laugh.

“The Church wants no such makeshift penances,” he said passionately. “It has no use for the sinner that commits deliberate crime to-day and comes cringing and triumphant to the confessional to-morrow. We have no use for such as you,” he suddenly shouted, flinging out his arm and pointing his index finger at her. “You are a disgrace to the Church, a pollution; you are the lips of the leper upon the pure body of a Saint. We have no place for such as you. We have only one method by which to deal with you and such as you—” He curved his body, and his voice fell to a hollow monotone: “Ex-commu-nica-tion.”

The woman stared at him with pale distended eyes, no breath issuing from her dry lips, then sank to the floor, a miserable, collapsed, quivering heap. The priest went to the window and called to a man who stood on the walk below.