"I have not said that I doubted it. I have only thought that if it were, you would be glad to accept any means laid before you, of getting the assistance that you feel you need." The girl, for she looked only that, buried her face in her hands, and a faint sob echoed through the empty church. "It would be so much easier to speak to you; it's so hard," she murmured, "to tell a stranger all you've done wrong, and all the miserable things that have happened to you." "You don't have to tell him all that has happened to you," he said. "You have only to tell him of your sins. Let me add, that the priest to whom I advise you to go, has great sympathy with suffering, and is very gentle." Missy hardly breathed, such was her interest in the scene before her. She took in all the complication, the shock that seeing the woman for whom he had had such strong feeling, had given St. John, the sorrow of finding her bound to the miserable criminal, whose last hours he was trying to purify, the fear of repulsing her, and the danger of ministering to her. At first she had been overwhelmed with alarm for him, the grace and beauty of the young creature was so unusual, her desire to re-establish relations of intimacy so unmistakable. But something, she did not know what, reassured her. Perhaps it was the faint gleam of a smile on his face, when she asked him to forgive her; as if he had said, "You ask me to forgive you for doing me the greatest favor you could possibly have done." Perhaps it was that she felt intuitively the inferiority of the woman's nature, that she knew St. John had been growing away from her, leaving her behind with such strides that she could not touch him. He was beyond danger from silken hair or peach-bloom cheeks. If danger came to him, it would be in a subtler form. She wondered at herself, feeling so confident; she felt very sorry for the girl, not afraid of her. She looked back at the past, and said to herself, "This pink-faced, long-lashed young thing has held a great deal in her hands, but she holds it no more." Her sin and folly turned more than one life into a new channel. St. John's, his mother's, Missy's own, what marks they bore of her flippant treachery! She tried to picture to herself how they would have been living, if, on that October night, so long ago, St. John had brought her home, instead of coming alone, with his ashy, dreadful face. If he had married her, and come to live at Yellowcoats, perhaps, or near them. Ah! perhaps they would all have been in the dear home. Would it have been better? Looking at St. John, and looking at her, with the appreciation that she had of her character from those few moments--would it have been better? No, it would not have been better. Bitter as this change had been to her, Missy knew in her heart it would not have been better. She knew St. John might well smile at the idea of forgiving her, and she herself, though she did