"Don't," the priest said, "introduce the sacred name into an affair of Piccadilly bad girls. . . ." He stopped. "Heaven help me," he said again, "don't ask me to answer the question of what you should or shouldn't have done. You know I loved your husband like a brother, and you know I've loved you and Sylvia ever since she was a tiny. And I thank God that I am not your spiritual adviser, but only your friend in God. For if I had to answer your question I could answer it only in one way." He broke off to ask: "Where is that woman?"
Mrs. Satterthwaite called:
"Sylvia! Sylvia! Come here!"
A door in the shadows opened and light shone from another room behind a tall figure leaning one hand on the handle of the door. A very deep voice said:
"I can't understand, mother, why you live in rooms like a sergeants' mess." And Sylvia Tietjens wavered into the room. She added: "I suppose it doesn't matter. I'm bored."
Father Consett groaned:
"Heaven help us, she's like a picture of Our Lady by Fra Angelico."
Immensely tall, slight and slow in her movements, Sylvia Tietjens wore her reddish, very fair hair in great bandeaux right down over her ears. Her very oval, regular face had an expression of virginal lack of interest such as used to be worn by fashionable Paris courtesans a decade before that time. Sylvia Tietjens considered that, being privileged to go everywhere where one went and to have all men at her feet, she had no need to change her expression or to infuse into it the greater animation that marked the more common beauties of the early twentieth century. She moved slowly from the door and sat languidly on the sofa against the wall.
"There you are, Father," she said. "I'll not ask you to shake hands with me. You probably wouldn't."
"As I am a priest," Father Consett answered, "I could not refuse. But I'd rather not."