"But when the other lives are tangled up with yours, when you can only tell half truths—"
He smiled then. "Mademoiselle Jeanne, your short life has not had time to get much entangled with other lives, or with secrets you are aware of."
"I think it has been curiously entangled," she replied. "M'sieu Bellestre, whom I have almost forgotten, M. Loisel—and the old schoolmaster I told you of, who I fancy now was a sad heretic—"
She paused and flushed, while her eyes were slowly downcast. There was Monsieur St. Armand. How could she explain this to a priest? And was not Monsieur a heretic, too? That was her own precious, delightful secret, and she would give it into no one's keeping.
She was very happy with all this mystery about her, he thought, very simple minded and sweet, doing the whole duty of a daughter to this poor Indian woman in return for her care. And when Pani was gone? She was surely fitted for some other walk in life, but she was unconsciously proud, she would not step over into it, some one must take her by the hand.
"But why trouble about the Church, as you call it? It is the life one leads, not the organization. Are these people down by the wharves and those holes on St. Louis street, where there is drunkenness and gambling and swearing, any the better for their confession and their masses, and what not?"
"If I was the priest they should not come unless they reformed," and her eyes flashed. "But when I turn away something calls me, and when I go there I do not like it. They want me to go among the sisters, to be a nun perhaps, and that I should hate."
"At present you are doing a daughter's duty, let that suffice. Pani would soon die without you. When a new work comes to hand God will make the way plain for you."
Jeanne gave an assenting nod.
"She is a curious child," the minister said to his wife afterward, "and yet a very sweet, simple-hearted one. But to confine her to any routine would make her most unhappy."