“That gen’l’man’s the Reverend Norman North,—­he come by the Trinidad last Wednesday; he’s sailin’ to St. George’s,” Joe volunteered.  “Don’t look much like a reverend, do he?” And with that the carriage had started.

Seeing the sights at St. George’s, they came to the small old church, on its western side a huge flight of steps, capped with a meek doorway; on its eastern end a stone tower guarding statelily a flowery graveyard.  The moment the girl stepped inside, the spell of the bright peace which filled the place caught her.  The Sunday decorations were still there, and hundreds of lilies bloomed from the pillars; sunshine slanted through the simple stained glass and lay in colored patches on the floor; there were square pews of a bygone day; there was a pulpit with a winding stair; there were tablets on the walls to shipwrecked sailors, to governors and officers dead here in harness.  The clumsy woodwork, the cheap carpets, the modest brasses, were in perfect order; there were marks everywhere of reverent care.

“Let me stay,” the girl begged.  “I don’t want to drive about.  I want to stay in this place.  I’ll meet you at the hotel for lunch, if you’ll leave me.”  And they left her.

The verger had gone, and she was quite alone.  Deep in the shadow of a gallery she slid to her knees and hid her face.  “O God!” she whispered,—­“O God, forgive me!” And again the words seemed torn from her—­“O God, forgive me!”

There were voices in the vestibule, but the girl in the stress of her prayer did not hear.

“Deal not with us according to our sins, neither reward us according to our iniquities,” she prayed, the accustomed words rushing to her want, and she was suddenly aware that two people stood in the church.  One of them spoke.

“Don’t bother to stay with me,” he said, and in the voice, it seemed, were the qualities that a man’s speech should have—­strength, certainty, the unteachable tone of gentle blood, and beyond these the note of personality, always indescribable, in this case carrying an appeal and an authority oddly combined.  “Don’t stay with me.  I like to be alone here.  I’m a clergyman, and I enjoy an old church like this.  I’d like to be alone in it,” and a bit of silver flashed.

If the tip did it or the compelling voice, the verger murmured a word about luncheon, was gone, and the girl in her dim corner saw, as the other turned, that he was the rescuer of her camera, whose name was, Joe had said and she remembered, Norman North.  She was about to move, to let herself be seen, when the young man knelt suddenly in the old-fashioned front pew, as a good child might kneel who had been taught the ways of his mother church, and bent his dark head.  She waited quietly while this servant spoke to his Master.  There was no sound in the silent, sun-lanced church, but outside one heard as from far away the noises of the village.  Katherine’s eyes rested on the bowed head, and she wondered uncertainly