ed in French as if disinclined to
speak louder, "if you were but as I am, my brother, if you were but one
of the true flock shepherded by the only Shepherd! Perhaps this is but
the beginning. Perhaps you desire to cast away your inadequate faith
and come to us, be one with us. My brother, I pray that this may be
so. With us alone you shall have comfort to your soul and sweet solace
in affliction, peace of mind, honesty of conviction, and after many a
struggle, purity of life."

As he ceased, Ringfield, by some extraordinary instinct which mastered
him, at once fell upon his knees at the side of Father Rielle, who had
taken a seat not far from the door, where he might command a view of
the bridge in case of interruption, and with that dangerous hole in the
footway in his memory.

"If I say 'Holy Father,' will that be right?"

"Quite right, my son. Have no fear. Say on."

Ringfield bowed his head on his hands and began:--

"Holy Father----"

The priest waited quietly. His thin sensitive visage was transfigured
and his whole being uplifted and dignified as he thus became the
Mediator between Man and God.

"Holy Father, I know no form of word----"

"That does not matter. Whether you cry 'Peccavi' or 'Father, I have
sinned,' it is all the same."

"Holy Father, I have sinned, sinned grievously before God and Heaven,
before men and angels, but most of all have I sinned before my own
ideals and conceptions of what I meant to be--a Christian clergyman.
Hear my confession, Holy Father; with you to love, love a woman, would
be sin; it was not sin for me, and yet in loving a woman it became sin
also with me, for it blotted out God and humanity. I not only loved--I
also hated; I lived to hate. I hated while I was awake and while I
slept, in walking, in eating, in drinking, so that my life became a
burden to me and I forsook the throne of God in prayer."

The priest, in the moment's pause which had followed these words of
self-abasement, had seen something across the river that claimed his
attention, nevertheless he gravely encouraged the penitent.

"Keep nothing back, my son. Let me hear all."

What he had seen was a man running up and down in front of Poussette's,
in some agitation as he fancied, presently to be joined by two or three
others.

"Thus I lived, hating. I left this place, hating, and I followed him,
you know whom I mean, hating. I met him there or rather I sought him
out and helped him to