"The Fathers and Sisters wear out their lives to save these people. We teach them with incredible pains the fundamental rules of civilization; we teach them how to save their souls alive." The Boy had jumped up and laid his hand on the door-knob. "You come. You teach them to smoke—"
The Boy wheeled round.
"I don't smoke."
"... and to gamble."
"Nicholas taught me to gamble. Brother Paul, I swear—"
"Yes, and to swear and get drunk, and so find the shortest way to hell."
"Father Brachet! Father Wills!" a voice called without.
The door-knob turned under the Boy's hand, and before he could more than draw back, a whiff of winter blew into the room, and a creature stood there such as no man looks to find on his way to an Arctic gold camp. A girl of twenty odd, with the face of a saint, dressed in the black habit of the Order of St. Anne.
"Oh, Brother Paul! you are wanted—wanted quickly. I think Catherine is worse; don't wait, or she'll die without—" And as suddenly as she came the vision vanished, carrying Brother Paul in the wake of her streaming veil.
The Boy sat down by the stove, cogitating how he should best set about finding Nicholas to explain the failure of their mission.... What was that? Voices from the other side. The opposite door opened and a man appeared, with Nicholas and his father close behind, looking anything but cast down or decently penitential.