"I know, I know," he interrupted impatiently. "It's the Superior-General I mean, of course—everything must come to her in the long run, naturally. Have you full confidence in her, now?"
Alex felt as incapable of a negative reply as of an affirmative one. She knew that she did not understand the term "full confidence" as he did, and she temporized weakly.
"But our Mother-General is away in South America—she keeps delaying, and that's one reason why nothing has been settled about me. She hasn't even left America yet."
"I'm well aware of that. Don't waste time playing with me that way, Sister, ye'll get no further. Ye know very well what I mean. Now, tell me now, will it do for ye if I arrange for your transfer to another house—maybe to the one in London, or somewhere in your own country?"
The instinct of the imprisoned creature that sees another form of the same trap offered it under the guise of freedom, made her revolt.
"No," she cried. "No! I want to get right away—I want to stop being a nun."
The priest suddenly hit the table with his clenched fist, making it rock, and making his auditor start painfully.
"That's what you'll never do, not if ye got release from the holy vows ten times over. Once a nun always a nun, Sister, although ye may be false and faithless and go back into the very midst of the world ye've renounced. But ye'll find no comfort there, no blessing, and God'll remember it against ye, Sister. A soul that spurns His choicest graces need expect no mercy, either here or hereafter. I tell ye straight, Sister, that ye'll be deliberately jeopardizing your immortal soul, if ye give in to this wicked folly. Ye've to choose between God and the Devil—between a little while of suffering here, maybe, and then Eternity in which to enjoy the reward of the faithful, or a hideous mockery of freedom here, followed by Hell and its torments for ever and ever. Which is it to be?"
Alex was terrified, but it was the priest's anger that terrified her, not the threats that he uttered. At the back of her mind, lay the dim conviction that no Hell could surpass in intensity of bitterness that which her spirit was traversing on earth.
Father Farrell looked at her frightened, distorted face, and his voice sank into persuasiveness.