"He is wounded, in hospital, at Dunkirk."
"Sad, sad," said the vicar, gently shaking his handsome grey head. "And ... you wish me to help you to go and see him?"
"No!" Louise uttered the word like a cry. Sudden tears welled up into her eyes, rolled rapidly down her cheeks and dropped upon her folded hands in their black cotton gloves.
"Alors? ..." interrogated the vicar, with his head still more on one side.
Louise raised her dark lashes and looked at the kind handsome face before her, looked at the narrow benevolent forehead, the firm straight lips, the beautiful hands (the vicar knew they were beautiful hands) with the finger-tips lightly pressed together. Instinctively she felt that here she would find no help. She knew that if she asked for pity, for protection, for money, it would be given her. But she also knew that what she was about to crave would meet with a stern repulse.
She had made up her mind that this was to be her last appeal for help, her last effort to obtain release. He was the priest, he was the representative of the All-Merciful....
She made the sign of the cross, she dropped on her knees and grasped his hand. "Mon pere," she said—thus she used to address the Curé of Bomal, butchered on that never-to-be-forgotten night. "I will tell you——"
The vicar withdrew his hand from her grasp. "I beg you, madam, not to address me in that way. Also pray rise from your knees and take a seat." Ah me! how melodramatic were the Latin races! Poor woman! as if all this were necessary in order, probably, to ask for a few pounds, or to say that she could not get on with the peppery Mrs. Whitaker.
Louise had blushed crimson and risen quickly to her feet. "I am sorry," she said.
And then the kind vicar blushed too and felt that he had behaved like a brute.