rch workers and an elderly lady or two who happened to be passing
and dropped in. The elderly ladies who lived in the parish were much too
busy for any such foolishness.

But this evening--the evening of the day I had met Gideon--there was a
girl in church. She was rather at the back, and I didn't see who it was
till I was going out. Then she stopped me at the door, and I saw that it
was Clare Potter. I knew Clare Potter very slightly, and had never found
her interesting. I had always believed her to be conventional and
commonplace, without the brains of the twins or even the mild
spirituality of Frank.

But I was startled by her face now; it was white and strained, and
emotion wavered pitifully over it.

'Please,' she said, 'will you hear my confession?'

'I'm very sorry,' I told her, 'but I can't. I'm still in deacon's
orders.'

She seemed disappointed.

'Oh! Oh dear! I didn't know....'

I was puzzled. Why had she pitched on me? Hadn't she, I wondered, a
regular director, or was it her first confession she wanted to make? I
began something about the vicar being always glad ... But she stopped me.

'No, please. It must be you. There's a reason.... Well, if you can't hear
my confession, may I tell you something in private, and get your advice?'

'Of course,' I said.

'Now, at once, if you've time.... It's very urgent.'

I had time, and we went into the vestry.

She sat down, and I waited for her to speak. She wasn't nervous, or
embarrassed, as most people are in these interviews. Two things occurred
to me about her; one was that she was, in a way, too far through, too
mentally agitated, to be embarrassed; the other was that she was, quite
unconsciously, posing a little, behaving as the heroine of one of her
mother's novels might have behaved. One knows the situation in
fiction--the desperate girl appealing out of her misery to the Christian
priest for help. So many women have this touch of melodrama, this sense
of a situation.... I believed that she was, as she sat there, in these
two conditions simultaneously, exactly as I was simultaneously analysing
her and wanting to be of what service I could.

She leant forward across the vestry table, locking and unlocking
her hands.

'This is quite private, isn't it,' she said. 'As private as if...?'

'Quite,' I told her.

She drew a long, shivering breath, and leant her forehead on her
clasped hands.

'You know,' she said, so low that I had to bend forward