At the announcement he straightened suddenly and wheeled round to face me, inquiry in his glance. My mother, too, half rose, and remained so, staring at me, her amazement at seeing me increased by the strange appearance I presented. Eugenio closed the door and departed, leaving me standing there, just within it; and for a moment no word was spoken. The cheerless, familiar room, looking more cheerless than it had done of old, with its high-set windows and ghastly Crucifix, affected me in a singular manner. In this room I had known a sort of peace--the peace that is peculiarly childhood's own, whatever the troubles that may haunt it. I came into it now with hell in my soul, sin-blackened before God and man, a fugitive in quest of sanctuary. A knot rose in my throat and paralysed awhile my speech. Then with a sudden sob, I sprang forward and hobbled to her upon my wounded feet. I flung myself down upon my knees, buried my head in her lap, and all that I could cry was: “Mother! Mother!” Whether perceiving my disorder, my distraught and suffering condition, what remained of the woman in her was moved to pity; whether my cry acting like a rod of Moses upon that rock of her heart which excess of piety had long since sterilized, touched into fresh life the springs that had long since been dry, and reminded her of the actual bond between us, her tone was more kindly and gentle than I had ever known it. “Agostino, my child! Why are you here?” And her wax-like fingers very gently touched my head. “Why are you here--and thus? What has happened to you?” “Me miserable!” I groaned. “What is it?” she pressed me, an increasing anxiety in her voice. At last I found courage to tell her sufficient to prepare her mind. “Mother, I am a sinner,” I faltered miserably. I felt her recoiling from me as from the touch of something unclean and contagious, her mind conceiving already by some subtle premonition some shadow of the thing that I had done. And then Gervasio spoke, and his voice was soothing as oil upon troubled waters. “Sinners are we all, Agostino. But repentance purges sin. Do not abandon yourself to despair, my son.” But the mother who bore me took no such charitable and Christian view. “What is it? Wretched boy, what have you done?” And the cold repugnance in her voice froze anew the courage I was forming. “O God help me! God help me!” I groaned miserably. Gervasio, seeing my condition, with that quick and saintly sympathy that was his, came softly towards me and set a hand upon my shoulder. “Dear Agostino,” he murmured, “would you find it easier to tell me first? Will you confess to me, my son? Will you let me lift this burden from your soul?” Still on my knees I turned and looked up into that pale, kindly face. I caught his thin hand, and kissed it ere he could snatch it away. “If there were more priests like you,” I cried, “there would be fewer sinners like me.”