attached both to the celebration of the sacred rites and to the hearing
of Mass. The chapel depended for what fresh air it had on a narrow door
opening straight on to ladder-like stairs leading down directly and out
on to the terrace below. It was by this way that the small and scattered
congregation gained access to the chapel when the presence of a priest
permitted of Mass being celebrated there.

Catherine went up close to the altar rails, and sat down on the
arm-chair placed there for her sole use. She felt that now, when about
to wrestle with her soul, she could not kneel and pray. Since she had
been last in the chapel, acting sacristan that same morning, life had
taken a great stride forward, dragging her along in its triumphant wake,
a cruel and yet a magnificent conqueror.

Hiding her face in her hands, she lived again each agonized and
exquisite moment she had lived through as there had fallen on her ears
the words of James Mottram's shamed confession. Once more her heart was
moved to an exultant sense of happiness that he should have said these
things to her--of happiness and shrinking shame....

But soon other thoughts, other and sterner memories were thrust upon
her. She told herself the bitter truth. Not only had she led James
Mottram into temptation, but she had put all her woman's wit to the task
of keeping him there. It was her woman's wit--but Catherine Nagle called
it by a harsher name--which had enabled her to make that perilous rock
on which she and James Mottram now stood heart to heart together,
appear, to him at least, a spot of sanctity and safety. It was she, not
the man who had gazed at her with so ardent a belief in her purity and
honour, who was playing traitor--and traitor to one at once confiding
and defenceless....

Then, strangely, this evocation of Charles brought her burdened
conscience relief. Catherine found sudden comfort in remembering her
care, her tenderness for Charles. She reminded herself fiercely that
never had she allowed anything to interfere with her wifely duty. Never?
Alas! she remembered that there had come a day, at a time when James
Mottram's sudden defection had filled her heart with pain, when she had
been unkind to Charles. She recalled his look of bewildered surprise,
and how he, poor fellow, had tried to sulk--only a few hours later to
come to her, as might have done a repentant child, with the words, "Have
I offended you, dear love?" And she who now avoided h