a legitimate and
inoffensive proceeding.

"Thanks, no," he said, "I think not. We desire people's prayers, rather
than their alms."

He went away immediately, and she glossed over his scandalous behaviour,
and said farewell to him as she always did, in spite of the unusual
look of consciousness in her eyes. She continued to hold the ten
rupees carefully and separately, as if she would later examine them in
diagnosing her pain. It was keener and profounder than any humiliation,
the new voice, crying out, of a trampled tenderness. She stood and
looked after him for a moment with startled eyes and her hand, in a
familiar gesture of her profession, upon her heart. Then she went to her
room, and deliberately loosened her garments and lay down upon her bed,
first to sob like that little child she remembered, and afterwards to
think, until the world came and knocked at her door and bade her come
out of herself and earn money.

CHAPTER XIII

The compulsion which took Stephen Arnold to Crooked Lane is hardly
ours to examine. It must have been strong, since going up to Mrs. Sand
involved certain concessions, doubtless intrinsically trifling, but of
exaggerated discomfort to the mind spiritually cloistered, whatever its
other latitude. Among them was a distinctly necessary apology, difficult
enough to make to a lady of rank so superior and authority so voyant
in the Church militant, by a mere fighting soul without such straps and
buttons as might compel recognition upon equal terms. It is impossible
to know how far Stephen envisaged the visit as a duty--the priestly
horizon is perhaps not wholly free from mirage--or to what extent he
confessed it an indulgence. He was certainly aware of a stronger desire
than he could altogether account for that Captain Filbert should not
desert her post. The idea had an element of irritation oddly personal;
he could not bear to reflect upon it. It may be wondered whether in any
flight of venial imagination Arnold saw himself in a parallel situation
with a lady. I am sure he did not. It may be considered, however, that
among mirages there are unaccountable resemblances--resemblances without
shape or form. He might fix his gaze, at all events, upon the supreme
argument that those who were given to holy work, under any condition,
in any degree, should make no rededication of themselves. This had to
support him as best it could against the conviction that had Captain
Filbert been Sister A