“Father Aubert!”—it was a quick cry, but low, and one of apprehension.
“Mademoiselle Valérie”—the words came slowly; it seemed as though his soul faltered now, and had not strength to say this thing—“I am not Father Aubert.”
She did not move. She repeated the words with long pauses between, as though she groped dazedly in her mind for their meaning and significance.
“You—are—not—Father—Aubert?”
The Bishop, hands clasped behind his back, his head bowed, had withdrawn a few paces out of the lantern light toward the rear of the buckboard. Raymond's hands closed and gripped upon the wheel-tire against which he stood—closed tighter and tighter until it seemed the tendons in his hand must snap.
“Father Aubert is the man you know as Henri Mentone”—his eyes were upon her hungrily, pleading, searching for some sign, a smile, a gesture of sympathy that would help him to go on—and her hands were clasped suddenly, wildly to her bosom. “When you came upon me in the road that night I had just changed clothes with him. I—I was trying to escape.”
She closed her eyes. Her face became a deathly white, and she swayed a little on her feet.
“You—you are not a—a priest?”
He shook his head.
“It was the only way I saw to save my life. He had been struck by the falling limb of a tree. I thought that he was dead.”