Cis went into a pew close to the door, and from habit, but without consciousness of her action, knelt and made the sign of the cross because she had just come into church. She had long ago fallen into the way of thus kneeling on entering, and, first of all prayers, repeating the Act of Contrition. Now she began slowly, without knowing what she said, to whisper: “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. O my God, I am heartily sorry that--” Her lips ceased moving; she could go no farther. Heartily sorry--for what? Rodney Moore had a living wife; he was unhappy about it. So was she. She was sorry that this was so. There was that nice apartment which he had shown her, and those chairs; one was the chair for the lady of the house. What hurt her so? Was it her head? It did not seem to her that she had brought it with her, yet she felt a terrible pain; it seemed to be in her head. What was it she had to think about? Rodney was not dead. Why did she feel as though he were dead? Or was it that there was no Rodney? He had a wife, alive. He had none, so he had said, but if she were alive? He must have forgotten, poor Rodney, that when one’s wife is alive--there she is: alive! Still the wife. She was not thinking, and she had come here to think; it was quiet, deeply, peacefully quiet, and somehow quieting, as well. She would be able to think here. Cis knelt staring at the altar, her face so white that an old woman, entering, turned as if to speak to her, then changed her mind and went on, shaking her head pityingly, saying to herself: “God pity and help her, the poor young creature!” as she ducked her edition of a genuflection toward the altar and knelt in a pew, rattling big brown rosary beads, supplemented by several large medals, on the back of the pew against which she rested her gnarled hands. Was it that the benison was effective? It was not long before the strange submergence of her conscious self which had overwhelmed Cicely on hearing Rodney’s knell of her joy, broke and rolled back, leaving her soul bare to an agony that saw only too clearly, grasped only too acutely exactly what had befallen her. She was promised to marry within four weeks a man whose wife was still alive!