pon her knees.

The priest put on his stole and murmured a Latin prayer, making the sign
of the Cross over the head of his penitent.

"I fear I shall never remember all my sins. I have been living in mortal
sin so many years."

"I remember that you spoke to me of intellectual
difficulties--concerning faith. You see now, my dear child, that you
were deceiving yourself. Your real difficulties were quite different."

"I think that my doubts were sincere," Evelyn replied tremblingly, for
she felt that Monsignor expected her to agree with him.

"If your doubts were sincere, what has removed them? What has convinced
you of the existence of a future life? That, I believe, was one of your
chief difficulties. Have you examined the evidence?"

Evelyn murmured that that sense of right and wrong which she had never
been able to drive out of her heart implied the existence of God.

"But savages, to whom the Scriptures are unknown, have a sense of right
and wrong. Those who lived before the birth of Christ--the Greeks and
Romans--had a sense of right and wrong."

Knowing that the priest's absolution depended upon her acceptance of the
doctrine of a future life, she strove to believe as a little child. But
it was her sins of the flesh that she wanted to confess, and this
argument about the Incarnation had begun to seem out of place. Suddenly
it seemed to hear inexpressibly ludicrous that she should be kneeling
beside the priest. She could not help wondering what Owen would think of
her. She remembered his pointing out that it is stated in the Gospel
that the Messiah should be descended from David. Now, Mary was not of
royal blood, so it was through Joseph, who was not his father, that
Christ was descended from David. But these discrepancies did not matter.
She felt the Church to be necessary to her, and that its teaching
coincided with her deepest feeling seemed to her enough. But Monsignor
was insistent, and he pressed dogma after dogma upon her. All the while
the cocoa-nut matting ate into her knees, and she was perplexed by
remembrances of sexual abandonments. How to speak of them she did not
know, and she was haunted and terrified by the idea of concealing
anything which would invalidate her confession. So she hastily availed
herself of the first pause to tell him that she had lived with Owen
Asher for the last six years. The priest did not trouble to inquire
further, and she felt that she could not leave him under the imp