as nondescript as herself, Ellen guessed
the woman to be one of the humblest class of servants, one of those who
get their living by going out to work by the day. She leaned over the
bench, and Ellen could see she was praying all the while, and Ellen
wondered how Ned could expect this poor woman, earning a humble wage in
humble service, to cultivate what he called "the virtue of pride." Was
it not absurd to expect this poor woman to go through life trying to
make life "exuberant and triumphant"? And Ellen wished she could show
Ned this poor woman waiting to go into the confessional. In the
confessional she would find a refined and learned man to listen to her,
and he would have patience with her. Where else would she find a
patient listener? Where else would she find consolation? "The Gospel of
Life," indeed! How many may listen to the gospel of life, and for how
long may anyone listen? Sooner or later we are that poor woman waiting
to go into the confessional; she is the common humanity.

The other penitent was a girl about sixteen. Her hair was not yet
pinned up, and her dress was girlish even for her age, and Ellen judged
her to be one of the many girls who come up to Dublin from the suburbs
to an employment in a shop or in a lawyer's office, and who spend a few
pence in the middle of the day in tea-rooms. The girl looked round the
church so frequently that Ellen could not think of her as a willing
penitent, but as one who had been sent to confession by her father and
mother. At her age sensuality is omnipresent, and Ellen thought of the
check confession is at such an age. If that girl overstepped the line
she would have to confess everything, or face the frightful danger of a
bad confession, and that is a danger that few Catholic girls are
prepared to face.

The charwoman spent a long time in the confessional, and Ellen did not
begrudge her the time she spent, for she came out like one greatly
soothed, and Ellen remembered that Ned had once described the soothed
look which she noticed on the poor woman's face as "a look of foolish
ecstasy, wholly divorced from the intelligence." But what intellectual
ecstasy did he expect from this poor woman drifting towards her natural
harbour--the poor-house?

It was extraordinary that a man so human as Ned was in many ways should
become so inhuman the moment religion was mentioned, and she wondered
if the sight of that poor woman leaving the confessional would allay
his hatr