She bade him good-night, and left him. With her feeble step she slowly
mounted the Sassetto path, and it was some little time before her slender
form and white dress disappeared among the trees.

Father Benecke remained alone--a prey to many conflicting currents of
thought.

* * * * *

For him too the hour had been strangely troubling and revolutionary. On the
recognised lines of Catholic confession and direction, all that had been
asked of him would have been easy to give. As it was, he had been obliged
to deal with the moral emergency as he best could; by methods which, now
that the crisis was over, filled him with a sudden load of scrupulous
anguish.

The support of a great system had been withdrawn from him. He still felt
himself neither man nor priest--wavering in the dark.

This poor woman! He was conscious that her statement of her case had roused
in him a kind of anger; so passionate and unblushing had been the egotism
of her manner. Even after his long experience he felt in it something
monstrous. Had he been tender, patient enough?

What troubled him was this consciousness of the _woman_, as apart from
the penitent, which had overtaken him; the woman with her frail physical
health, possibly her terror of death, her broken heart. New perplexities
and compunctions, not to be felt within the strong dykes of Catholic
practice, rushed upon him as he sat thinking under the falling night. The