He heard Bee return to her place. He heard Claudia throw herself down on the floor by Bee's side, and say:
"Oh, let me lay my head down upon your lap, Bee!"
"Claudia, dear Claudia, what is the matter with you? What can I do for you?"
"Receive my confidence, that is all. Hear my confession. I must tell somebody or die. I wish I was a Catholic, and had a father confessor who would hear me and comfort me, and absolve my sins, and keep my secrets!"
"Can any man stand in that relation to a woman except her father, if she is single, or her husband, if she is married?" asked Bee.
"I don't know—and I don't care! Only when I passed by St. Patrick's Church, with this load of trouble on my soul, I felt as if it would have done me good to steal into one of those veiled recesses and tell the good old father there!"
"You could have told your heavenly Father anywhere."
"He knows it already; but I durst not pray to him! I am not so impious as that either. I have not presumed to pray for a month—not since my betrothal."
"You have not presumed to pray. Oh, Claudia!"
"How should I dare to pray, after I had deliberately sold myself to the demon—after I had deliberately determined to sin and take the wages of sin?"