His face changed. He waited an instant before replying.

'Yes, Madame--I am!' he said at last, with a firm and passionate 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 compassionately.

'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