Salome lingered behind the sisterhood, and watched the handsome stranger in the third pew front—­a stranger to every one present except herself.

He also lingered behind all his companions, and turned and looked intently up into the screened choir.

Salome saw his full face for the first time since his appearance there—­and she saw that it was deadly, ghastly pale, with white lips and glassy eyes.  He gazed into the screened choir as into vacancy.

Salome knew that he could see nothing there, yet she shrank back and stood in the deepest shadow, until she saw him pick up his hat and glide from the chapel, the last man that went out.

“Ah, what could have changed him so?” she thought—­“love, fear, remorse—­what?”

He had nothing to fear from her.  If no one should take vengeance on him until she should do so, then would he go unpunished to his grave, and his sin would never have found him out in this world.  Nay, sooner than to have hurt him in life, liberty, honor, or estate, she, herself, would have borne the penalty of all his crimes.  Yet of those crimes what an unspeakable horror she had, though for the criminal what an unutterable pity—­what an undying love.

While she stood there, gazing through the choir-screen upon the spot whence the stranger had disappeared, her bosom, torn by these conflicting passions of horror, pity, love, she felt a soft touch on her shoulder, and turning, saw the mother-superior at her side.

“My daughter, why do you loiter here?” she tenderly inquired.

Salome’s pale face flushed, as she replied: 

“Oh, mother, I was watching him until he left the church.”

“My daughter, it was a deadly sin to do so!” gravely replied the abbess.

“He could not see me, mother,” sighed Salome, in a tremulous voice.

“That was well.  Come now to your own room, daughter, and do not tremble so.  You have nothing to fear, except from your own weak and sinful nature,” said the abbess, as she drew the girl’s arm within her own and led her from the choir.

“Am I so weak and sinful, mother?” inquired Salome, after a silence which had lasted until the two had reached the door of the Infants’ Asylum, where Salome now lodged.

“As every human being is! and especially as every woman is in all affairs of the heart,” gravely returned the abbess.

“Can you spare me a few minutes, mother?  Will you come in and let me talk to you a little while?  Have you time?  I want to talk to you.  Oh!  I wish we had mother-confessors for women—­for girls, I mean, instead of father-confessors.  Can you come in and let me talk to you, mother, for a little while?”

“Surely, daughter,” said the abbess, gently as with her own hand she opened the door and led her votaress into the room.

Salome offered the one chair to the lady-superior, and then took the foot-stool at her feet, and laid her head upon her knees.