“Nothing, if your sorrow is that true sorrow which means repentance, and goes hand-in-hand with atonement. Forgive me, my dear friend, for presuming to speak unreservedly to you. If I try to find out the nature of your wound it is only that I may help you to heal it. Ever since I have known you I have seen the tokens of a wounded heart, a bruised and broken spirit. I saw you surrounded with all the blessings that make woman’s lot happy. It was hardly possible to conceive fairer surroundings and truer friends. Can you wonder, then, if my compassionate interest was awakened by the indications of a deep-rooted sorrow for which there was no apparent cause? I saw your emotion in church, saw how quickly your heart and mind responded to the appeal of religion--saw in you a soul attuned to heavenly things, and day by day my interest in you and yours grew stronger. The hope of seeing you again, of helping you to bear your burden, of ultimately lightening it, was one of my reasons for coming to Rome. I felt somehow that you and I had not met in vain--that my power to move you was not without a meaning in both our lives; that if, as I thought, you needed spiritual help and comfort, it was my vocation to help and comfort you. And so I came to Rome, and so I found out where you spent your quiet hours, and so I have followed you here this afternoon. Tell me, Mrs. Disney, did I presume too much? Was it the preacher’s vanity or the priest’s intuition that spoke?” “It was intuition,” she said. “You saw that I had sinned. None but a sinner could shed such tears--could so feel the terror of God’s wrath.” “It is of His love I want you to think. Of His immeasurable love and pity. Of His Son’s Divine compassion. If you have any special need of His pardon; if there is any sinful secret locked in your heart; do not let the golden hours go by--the time meet for repentance.” “I have repented,” she cried piteously. “My life has been one long repentance ever since my sin.” “And your husband--he who so fondly loves you--he knows all, and has forgiven all?” “Knows!” The word broke from her lips almost in a shriek of horror. “He knows nothing--he must never know. He would despise me, leave me to die alone, while he went far away from me, to the very end of the world. He would take his son with him. I should be left alone--alone to face death--the most desolate creature God ever looked upon. Oh, Father Rodwell, why have you wrung my secret from me?” she cried, grovelling on her knees in the long grass beside him, clinging to his hand as he bent over her, gravely compassionate, deeply moved by her distress. “How cruel to question--to torture me--how cruel to use your power of reading guilty hearts. You will tell my husband, who so loves and trusts me. You will tell him what a guilty wretch I am.”