Felix had followed every movement of the girl with an intensity that almost paralyzed his senses.  He had looked into her bloodshot eyes, noted the hard lines drawn around the corners of her mouth, the coarse, painted lips, dry hair, and sunken cheeks.  He had heard her harsh laugh and caught the glint of her drunken leer.  A cold shiver swept through him.  It was as if he had stepped on a flat stone covering a grave which had tilted beneath his feet, revealing a corpse but a few months buried.  Had he been anywhere else he would have sunk to the floor—­not to pray, but to rest his knees, which seemed giving out under him.

When service was over, he made his way down the aisle, waited until the last of the worshippers had had their final word with their priest, and, with a respectful bend of the head in recognition, followed Father Cruse into the sacristy.

“You remember me?” he said in a hoarse, constrained voice when the priest turned and faced him.

“Yes, you are Mr. O’Day—­Kitty Cleary’s friend, and I need not tell you how glad I am to see you,” and he held out a cordial hand.

“I have come as I promised you I would.  Can you give me half an hour?”

“With the greatest pleasure.  My duties are over just as soon as I put these vestments away.  But I am sorry you came to-night, for you have witnessed a most distressing sight.”

Felix looked at him steadily.  “Do such things happen often?” he asked, his voice breaking.

“Everything happens here, Mr. O’Day,” replied the priest gravely; “incredible things.  We once found a baby a month old in the gallery.  We baptized him and he is now one of our choir-boys.  But, forgive me,” he added with a smile, “such sights are best forgotten and may not interest you.”  He was studying his visitor as a doctor does a patient, trying to discover the seat of the disease.  That Felix was not the same man he had met the night at Kitty’s was apparent; then he had been merely a man with a sorrow, now he seemed laboring under a weight too heavy to bear.

Felix drew back his shoulders as if to brace himself the better and said:  “Can we talk here?”

“Yes, and with absolute privacy and freedom.  Take this chair; I will sit beside you.”  It was the voice of the father confessor now, encouraging the unburdening of a soul.

Felix glanced first around the simple room, with its quiet and seclusion, then stepped back and closed the sacristy door, saying, as he took his seat:  “There is no need, I suppose, of locking it?”

“Not the slightest.”

For a moment he sat with head bowed, one hand pressed to his forehead.  The priest waited, saying nothing.

“I have come to you, Father Cruse, because I need a man’s help—­not a priest’s—­a man’s.  If I have made no mistake, you are one.”

The fine white fingers of the priest were rising and falling ever so slightly on the velvet arm of the chair on which his hand rested, a compound gesture showing that both his brain and his hand were at his listener’s service.