“Will you hear my confession now, Monsignor?”

“The priest looked at her, his narrow, hard face concentrated in an ardent scrutiny.

“Certainly, my child, if you think you are sufficiently prepared.”

“I must confess now; I could not put it off again;” and glancing round the room, she slipped suddenly upon 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 impression that she had lived with Owen the moderate, sexual life which she believed was maintained between husband and wife.