When Agnes began her confession, her voice seemed to him to pass through every nerve; it seemed as if he could feel her presence thrilling through the very wood of the confessional.  He was astonished and dismayed at his own emotion.  But when she began to speak of the interview with the cavalier, he trembled from head to foot with uncontrollable passion.  Nature long repressed came back in a tempestuous reaction.  He crossed himself again and again, he tried to pray, and blessed those protecting shadows which concealed his emotion from the unconscious one by his side.  But he set his teeth in deadly resolve, and his voice, as he questioned her, came forth cutting and cold as ice crystals.

“Why did you listen to a word?”

“My father, it was so sudden.  He wakened me from sleep.  I answered him before I thought.”

“You should not have been sleeping.  It was a sinful indolence.”

“Yes, my father.”

“See now to what it led.  The enemy of your soul, ever watching, seized this moment to tempt you.”

“Yes, my father.”

“Examine your soul well,” said Father Francesco, in a tone of austere severity that made Agnes tremble.  “Did you not find a secret pleasure in his words?”

“My father, I fear I did,” said she, with a trembling voice.

“I knew it!  I knew it!” the priest muttered to himself, while the great drops started on his forehead, in the intensity of the conflict he repressed.  Agnes thought the solemn pause that followed was caused by the horror that had been inspired by her own sinfulness.

“You did not, then, heartily and truly wish him to go from you?” pursued the cold, severe voice.

“Yes, my father, I did.  I wished him to go with all my soul.”

“Yet you say you found pleasure in his being near you,” said Father Francesco, conscious how every string of his own being, even in this awful hour, was vibrating with a sort of desperate, miserable joy in being once more near to her.

“Ah,” sighed Agnes, “that is true, my father,—­woe is me!  Please tell me how I could have helped it.  I was pleased before I knew it.”

“And you have been thinking of what he said to you with pleasure since?” pursued the confessor, with an intense severity of manner, deepening as he spoke.

“I have thought of it,” faltered Agnes.

“Beware how you trifle with the holy sacrament!  Answer frankly.  You have thought of it with pleasure.  Confess it.”

“I do not understand myself exactly,” said Agnes.  “I have thought of it partly with pleasure and partly with pain.”

“Would you like to go with him and be his wife, as he said?”

“If it were right, father,—­not otherwise.”

“Oh, foolish child! oh, blinded soul! to think of right in connection with an infidel and heretic!  Do you not see that all this is an artifice of Satan?  He can transform himself into an angel of light.  Do you suppose this heretic would be brought back to the Church by a foolish girl?  Do you suppose it is your prayers he wants?  Why does, he not seek the prayers of the Church,—­of holy men who have power with God?  He would bait his hook with this pretence that he may catch your soul.  Do you believe me?”