So I said nothing but, ‘Well, let me know if ever I can be any use,’ and we parted at the top of Surrey Street.

4

We have evensong at five at St. Christopher’s.  No one conies much.  The people in the parish aren’t the weekday church sort.  Those among them who come to church at all mostly confine their energies to evening service on Sundays, though a few of them consent to turn up at choral mass at eleven.  And, by means of guilds and persuasion, we’ve induced a good many of the lads and girls to come to early mass sometimes.  The vicar gets discouraged at times, but not so much as most vicars would, because he more or less agrees with me in not thinking church-going a test of Christianity.  The vicar is one of the cleverest and most original parsons in the Church, in my opinion.  He has a keen, shrewd, practical insight into the distinction between essentials and non-essentials.  He is popular in the parish, but I don’t think the people understand, as a rule, what he is getting at.

Anyhow, the only people who usually came to our week-day services were a few church 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.