Her quick flaming was justified, he knew; one shouldn’t speak of help when one was so far away; he had exaggerated the sacerdotal note. “Oh, you despise me! It is because of that, and you are trying to hide it from me! What is religion to me, what is anything--anything in the world to me--if I have lost you, Gavan? Why are you so cruel, so horrible? I can’t understand it! I can’t bear it! Oh, I can’t! Why are our lives wrecked like this? Why did you leave me? Why have I become wicked? I was never, never meant to be wicked.” Tears, not of abasement, not of appeal, but of pure anguish ran down her face. He was nearer to that elemental sadness and could speak with a more human tone. “You are not wicked--no more--no less--than any one. I don’t despise you. Believe me, Alice. If I hadn’t changed, this would have drawn me to you; I should have felt a deeper tenderness because you needed me more. But think of me as a priest: I have changed as much as that. And remember that what you have yourself found out is true--the only thing to be afraid of is oneself, and the only escape from fear is to--is to”--he paused, hearing the triteness of his own words and wondering with a new wonder at their truth, their gray antiquity, their ever-verdant youth--“is to renounce,” he finished. He was standing now, ready for departure. In her eyes he saw at last the dignity of hopelessness, of an accepted doom, a pain far above panic. “Dear Alice,” he said, taking her hand--“dear Alice.” And, with all the delicacy of his shrinking from a too great directness, his eyes had a steadiness of demand that sank into the poor woman’s tossed, unstable soul, he added, “Don’t ever do anything ugly--or foolish--again.” Her lover lost,--the very slightness of the words “ugly,” “foolish,” told her how utterly lost,--a deep thrill of emotional exaltation went through the emptiness he left. She longed to clasp the lost lover and to sink at the knees of the priest. “I will be good. I will renounce myself,” she said, as though it were a creed before an altar; and hurriedly she whispered, poor child, “Perhaps in heaven--we will find each other.”