Her long connection with Llwellyn had left no traces of affection now. As she would kneel in the little windy church on the headland and listen to the rector, an old friend of Father Ripon's, reading prayers, she looked back on her past life as a man going about his business in sunlight remembers some horrid nightmare of the evening past. She but rarely allowed her thoughts to dwell upon the former partner of her sin, but when she did so it was with a sense of shrinking and dislike. As the new Light which filled her life taught, she endeavoured to think of the man with Christian charity and sometimes to pray that his heart also might be touched. But perhaps this was the most difficult of all the duties she set herself, although she had no illusions about the past, realised his kindness to her, and also that she had been at least as bad as he. But now there seemed a great gulf between them which she never cared to pass even in thought.
Her repentance was so sincere and deep, her mourning for her misspent life so genuine, that it never allowed her the least iota of spiritual pride—the snare of weaker penitents when they have turned from evil courses. Yet, try as she would, she could never manage to really identify her hopes and prayers with Llwellyn in any vivid way.
And now the young clergyman, the actual instrument of her own salvation as she regarded him, had come to her with this story in which she had recognised the truth.
In sad and eloquent words he had painted for her what the great fraud had meant to thousands. He told of upright and godly men stricken down because their faith was not strong enough to bear the blow. There was the curate at Wigan, who had shot himself and left a heart-breaking letter of mad mockery behind him; there were other cases of suicide. There was the surging tide of crime, rising ever higher and higher as the clergy lost all their influence in the slums of London and the great towns. He told her of Harold Spence, mentioning him as "a journalist friend of mine," explaining what a good fellow he was, and how he had overcome his temptations with the aid of religion and faith. And he described his own return to Lincoln's Inn, the disorder, and Harold's miserable story. She could picture it all so well, that side of life. She knew its every detail. And, moreover, Gortre had said "the evil was growing and spreading each day, each hour." True as it was that the myriad lamps of the Faithful only burned the brighter for the surrounding gloom, yet that gloom was growing and rolling up, even as the clouds on which her unseeing eyes were fixed as she walked along the shore. Men were becoming reckless; the hosts of evil triumphed on every side.
The thought which came to her as Gortre had gradually unfolded the object of his visit was startling. She herself might perhaps prove to be the pivot upon which these great events were turning. It was possible that by her words, that by means of her help, the dark conspiracy might be unveiled and the world freed from its burden. She herself might be able to do all this, a kind of thank-offering for the miraculous change that had been wrought in her life.
Yet, when it was all summed up, how little she had to tell Gortre after all! True, her information was of some value; it seemed to confirm what he and his friends suspected. But still it was very little, and it meant long delay, if she could provide no other key to open this dark door. And meanwhile souls were dying and sinking....
She had asked Gortre to come to her again in a week.
In that time, she had said, she might have some further information for him.
And now she was out here, alone on the sands, to ask her soul and God what she was to do.
The clouds fell lower, a cutting wind began to moan and cry over the sand, which was swept up and swirled in her face. And still she went on with a bitterness and chill as of death in her heart.