“Oh, Madame!” he exclaimed, as if impelled to liberate his mind to someone, “what is the matter with that man?  What is the matter?”

He stared fixedly into the twilight after Androvsky’s retreating form.

“With Monsieur Androvsky?”

She spoke quietly, but her mind was full of apprehension, and she looked searchingly at the priest.

“Yes.  What can it be?”

“But—­I don’t understand.”

“Why did he come to see me?”

“I asked him to come.”

She blurted out the words without knowing why, only feeling that she must speak the truth.

“You asked him!”

“Yes.  I wanted you to be friends—­and I thought perhaps you might——­”

“Yes?”

“I wanted you to be friends.”  She repeated it almost stubbornly.

“I have never before felt so ill at ease with any human being,” exclaimed the priest with tense excitement.  “And yet I could not let him go.  Whenever he was about to leave me I was impelled to press him to remain.  We spoke of the most ordinary things, and all the time it was as if we were in a great tragedy.  What is he?  What can he be?” (He still looked down the road.)

“I don’t know.  I know nothing.  He is a man travelling, as other men travel.”

“Oh, no!”

“What do you mean, Father?”

“I mean that other travellers are not like this man.”

He leaned his thin hands heavily on the gate, and she saw, by the expression of his eyes, that he was going to say something startling.

“Madame,” he said, lowering his voice, “I did not speak quite frankly to you this afternoon.  You may, or you may not, have understood what I meant.  But now I will speak plainly.  As a priest I warn you, I warn you most solemnly, not to make friends with this man.”

There was a silence, then Domini said: 

“Please give me your reason for this warning.”

“That I can’t do.”

“Because you have no reason, or because it is not one you care to tell me?”

“I have no reason to give.  My reason is my instinct.  I know nothing of this man—­I pity him.  I shall pray for him.  He needs prayers, yes, he needs them.  But you are a woman out here alone.  You have spoken to me of yourself, and I feel it my duty to say that I advise you most earnestly to break off your acquaintance with Monsieur Androvsky.”

“Do you mean that you think him evil?”

“I don’t know whether he is evil, I don’t know what he is.”

“I know he is not evil.”

The priest looked at her, wondering.

“You know—­how?”

“My instinct,” she said, coming a step nearer, and putting her hand, too, on the gate near his.  “Why should we desert him?”

“Desert him, Madame!”

Father Roubier’s voice sounded amazed.

“Yes.  You say he needs prayers.  I know it.  Father, are not the first prayers, the truest, those that go most swiftly to Heaven—­acts?”