Six high-backed arm-chairs, covered with old stamped leather, and a massive gate-legged table, black with age, on which he dined, completed his furniture. To some visitors the sparsely-furnished room might have seemed cold and cheerless; but there was an air of repose in its simplicity that satisfied the artistic mind. It looked like a room designed for prayer and meditation; not a room for study, for the one bookcase, with its neat range of theological works, would not have sufficed for the poorest student. It looked like a room meant for solitude and thought, and for only the most serious, the most confidential conversation. "I have always a sense of rest when I come into this room," Rutherford said, while Father Cyprian was lighting the candles in a bronze candelabrum on his desk. "You should come here oftener, Claude. You might make a retreat here once or twice a week. Sit on the bank for a few hours, and let that tumultuous river of modern life go by you, while you think of the land where there is no tumult, only a divine repose, or an agony of regret. When did you make your last confession, Claude?" "I have a bad memory, Father. Don't tax it too severely." The priest was not to be satisfied by a flippant answer. He pressed the question with authority. "What have I to confess? An empty, dissatisfied soul, a useless life; no positive wickedness, only negative worthlessness. I am not an infidel," Claude added eagerly. "If I were an unbeliever, I would not presume to claim your friendship. I should think it an insolence to cross your threshold. I have been slack, I have fallen into a languid acceptance of my own shortcomings." "You have fallen in love with another man's wife," said the priest gravely. "That is the name of your sin." The thin face paled ever so slightly, but there was no indignant protest; indeed, the head drooped a little, as if the sinner had whispered _mea culpa_. "I have never made love to her," he said in a low voice. "But I am human, and can't help loving her." "You can help going to her house. You can help hanging over her as she sits among her friends. When it comes to making love the Rubicon is passed, and the chances of retreat are as one in fifty. You are on the downward slope, Claude. Every time you enter that house you go there at the hazard of your soul." "She has so few real friends. She is alone among a crowd. She and I were friends as children, or at least when she was a child. I should be a cur if I kept away from her, when she needs my friendship, just because of the risk to myself. I am too fond of her ever to hazard a situation that would mean danger for her. I know how much a woman in her position has to lose. She is not the kind of woman who could pass through the furnace of the divorce court, and hold up her head and be happy afterwards. She is a creature of spirit, not of flesh. Passion would never make amends to her for shame."