The voices went on again, a little lower for a while. Then sobs came thick and fast. Linnet was crying bitterly. Rue strained her ear to hear; she couldn’t catch a single syllable. The priest seemed to be praying, as she thought,—praying in Latin. Then Linnet appeared to answer. For more than an hour together they wrestled with one another. At the end of that time, the tone of the priest’s voice changed. It was mild; it was gracious. In an agony of horror, Rue realised what that meant. She felt sure he must be pronouncing or promising absolution. So Linnet must have confessed!—must have renounced her sin!—must have engaged to go back and live with that man Andreas! Right or wrong, crime or shame, Rue would have given ten thousand pounds that moment—to take her back to Will Deverill’s. As Rue thought that thought, the door opened at last, and the three came forth right before her on the landing. Andreas and the priest wore an air of triumph. Linnet walked out in front of them, red-eyed, dejected, miserable. The Church had won; but, O God, what a victory! Rue sprang at her and seized her hand. “Linnet, Linnet!” she cried agonised, “don’t tell me you’ve let these two men talk you over! Don’t tell me you’re going back to that dreadful man! Don’t tell me you’re going to give up Will Deverill for such a creature!” Linnet fell upon her neck, weeping. “Rue, Rue, dear Rue,” she sobbed out, heart-broken, and half beside herself with love and religious terror, “it is not to _him_ that I yield, O lieber Gott, not to _him_, but to the Church’s orders.” “But you mustn’t!” Rue cried, aghast, and undeterred by the frowning priest. “You must stop here with me, and get a divorce, and marry him!” And she flung herself upon her. “There! what did I say?” Andreas interposed, with a demonstrative air, turning round to the man of God. “I told you I must take her away from London at once, at all costs, at all hazards—if you didn’t want her to fall into deadly sin, and the Church to lose its hold over her soul altogether.” The priest looked at Rue with a most disapproving eye. “Madam,” he said, curtly, in somewhat German English, “with exceeding great difficulty have I rescued this erring daughter from the very brink of mortal sin—happily, as yet unconsummated; and now, will you, a married woman yourself, who know what all this means, drive her back from her husband into the arms of her lover?” “Yes, yes; _I will_!” Rue cried boldly—and, oh, how Linnet admired her for it! “I will! I will! I’ll drive her back to Will Deverill! Anything to get her away from that man whom she hates! Anything to get her back to the other whom she loves! Linnet, Linnet, come away from them! Come up with me to my bedroom!” But Linnet drew back, trembling. “Yes, yes; I hate him!” she wailed out passionately, looking across at her husband. “I hate him! Oh, I hate him! And yet, I will go with him. Not for _him_, but for the Church! Oh, I hate him! I hate him!”