The aged priest resolutely uttered one word, a proud admission:
"Yes."
"And was not this mistress about to give birth to a child when you left her?"
Suddenly the anger which had been quelled twenty-five years ago, not quelled, but buried in the heart of the lover, burst through the wall of faith, resignation, and renunciation he had built around it. Almost beside himself, he shouted:
"I left her because she was unfaithful to me and was carrying the child of another man; had it not been for this, I should have killed both you and her, sir!"
The young man hesitated, taken aback at the sincerity of this outburst. Then he replied in a gentler voice:
"Who told you that it was another man's child?"
"She told me herself and braved me."
Without contesting this assertion the vagabond assumed the indifferent tone of a loafer judging a case:
"Well, then, mother made a mistake, that's all!"