Her imploring looks and the impetuous earnestness of her appeal were already leading John to self-reproach for the sudden hardening of his judgment upon her; but it was the last sentence that decided him. He knew well enough what she meant, and something in him deeper than the minister leaped at it. If she could wipe out that grisly memory, the earliest opportunity was due her, and it would relieve him exactly as if a smirch had been wiped from the brow of womanhood itself. Besides, there had always been to him something puzzling and incomprehensible about that scene in the restaurant, which, as the years went by, was more and more like a horrible dream than an actual experience. "I will come, Miss Dounay," he assured her gravely. "Oh, I am so glad!" the woman exclaimed with a little outstretching of her hand, which would have fallen upon John’s on the back of the pew, if it had not been raised at the moment in a gesture of negation as he said: "But please omit the supper. I am coming at your call—eagerly—happily—but not even as an old friend; solely as a minister!" This speech was so subtly modulated as to make its meaning clear, without the shadow of offense, and Marien’s humbly grateful manner of receiving it indicated tacit acknowledgment of the exact nature of the visit. Nevertheless, the minister found that in thus specifying he had written for himself a prescription larger than he could fill. Between the whiles of his busy afternoon and evening he was conscious of growing feelings of curiosity and personal interest that threatened to engulf the loftier object of his intended call. Old memories would revive themselves; old emotions would surge again. The spirit of adventure and the spice of expectancy thrust themselves into his thought, so that it was with a half-guilty feeling that he found himself at the hour appointed in the hotel corridor outside her room. He was minded to go back, but stood still instead, reproaching himself for cowardice. His very uncertainty gave him a feeling of littleness. Eternal Loyalty was still and forever to be his guiding principle; and should he not be as true to this actress who had appealed to, him, who perhaps was to tell him something that would prove she had a right to appeal to him, as to any other needy one? Should he shrink because of the irresistible feeling that it was more as a man interested in a woman than as a priest to confess a soul, that he found himself before her door? Should all of his experience go for nothing, and was his character, strengthened by years and chastened by some bitter lessons, still so undependable that he dared not put himself to the test of this woman, even though her mysterious power was so great that she could command a man’s love and deserve his hate, yet send him away from her without a hurt and feeling admiration mingled with his horror!