She drew two short breaths. “Oh, go away and leave me,” she said. “Why did you come here? I did not intend to confess until all was over.” “And you expected absolution?” “I would have done any penance. I would have burnt my flesh with red-hot irons—” He gave a short, scornful laugh. “The Church wants no such makeshift penances,” he said passionately. “It has no use for the sinner that commits deliberate crime to-day and comes cringing and triumphant to the confessional to-morrow. We have no use for such as you,” he suddenly shouted, flinging out his arm and pointing his index finger at her. “You are a disgrace to the Church, a pollution; you are the lips of the leper upon the pure body of a Saint. We have no place for such as you. We have only one method by which to deal with you and such as you—” He curved his body, and his voice fell to a hollow monotone: “Ex-commu-nica-tion.” The woman stared at him with pale distended eyes, no breath issuing from her dry lips, then sank to the floor, a miserable, collapsed, quivering heap. The priest went to the window and called to a man who stood on the walk below. XXII Bourke was pacing up and down among the trees, his eyes seldom absent from the man standing motionless in front of the house, or from the light in Honora Mairs’ window. He struck a match every few moments and looked at his watch. He lit a cigar, then found himself biting rapidly along its length with vicious energy. He flung it away and lit another, puffed at it violently, then let it fall to the ground as he pressed his hands suddenly to his eyes, shutting out the picture of Patience in her cell. All the agony and doubt and despair of the past year were crowded into this hour. Would the priest succeed? Was he clever enough to outwit a clever and implacable woman? If he had only caught her in a moment of weakness. But was there any weakness in that organisation of knit and tempered steel? “He’ll blarney her,” he thought, with sudden hope,—“but bah! you can’t blarney a snake. That will go so far with her and no farther. Only acting can save us. If he can act well enough to fill the stage on which this terrible tragedy is set, and conquer that woman’s imagination, he can save my poor girl, but not otherwise.” His hands clutched the bushes as he passed. He kicked the gravel from his feet. He cursed aloud, not knowing what he was saying. He felt an intolerable thirst; his eyeballs burned; his heart hammered spasmodically. He looked at his watch. It was twelve o’clock. His spinning brain conceived the wild project of forcing himself up to that lighted room at the corner of the house and putting the woman to the torture. And at that moment he saw the priest lean out of the window and speak to the notary public, who immediately entered the house. A half hour later the priest came out of the front door and toward him. He held a paper in his hand.