“Do you mean that . . . that there are consequences . . . going to be?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Does your husband know?”

“Yes.”

“And your father?”

“No.”

Mildred drew her hand away from me and crossed herself, saying beneath her breath: 

“Oh Mother of my God!”

I felt more humbled than I had ever been before, but after a while I said: 

“Now you see why I can never go back.  And you will save me, will you not?”

There was silence for some moments.  Mildred had drawn back in her chair as if an evil spirit had passed between us But at length she said: 

“It is not for me to judge you, Mary.  But the gentlemen will come up soon to know if you are the Mary O’Neill whom I knew at the Sacred Heart, and what am I to say to them?”

“Say no,” I cried.  “Why shouldn’t you?  They’ll never know anything to the contrary.  Nobody will know.”

“Nobody?”

I knew what Mildred meant, and in my shame and confusion I tried to excuse myself by telling her who the other woman was.

“It is Alma,” I said.

“Alma?  Alma Lier?”

“Yes.”

And then I told her how Alma had come back into my life, how she had tortured and tempted me, and was now trying to persuade my husband, who was a Protestant, to divorce me that she might take my place.

And then I spoke of Martin again—­I could not help it—­saying that the shame which Alma would bring on him would be a greater grief to me than anything else that could befall me in this world.

“If you only knew who he is,” I said, “and the honour he is held in, you would know that I would rather die a thousand deaths than that any disgrace should fall on him through me.”

I could see that Mildred was deeply moved at this, and though I did not intend to play upon her feelings, yet in the selfishness of my great love I could not help doing so.

“You were the first of my girl friends, Mildred—­the very first.  Don’t you remember the morning after I arrived at school?  They had torn me away from my mother, and I was so little and lonely, but you were so sweet and kind.  You took me into church for my first visitation, and then into the garden for my first rosary—­don’t you remember it?”

Mildred had closed her eyes.  Her face was becoming very white.

“And then don’t you remember the day the news came that my mother was very ill, and I was to go home?  You came to see me off at the station, and don’t you remember what you said when we were sitting in the train?  You said we might never meet again, because our circumstances would be so different.  You didn’t think we should meet like this, did you?”

Mildred’s face was growing deadly white.

“My darling mother died.  She was all I had in the world and I was all she had, and when she was gone there was no place for me in my father’s house, so I was sent back to school.  But the Reverend Mother was very kind to me, and the end of it was that I wished to become a nun.  Yes indeed, and never so much as on the day you took your vows.”