She returned him a spasmodic smile. She was conscious of a tear-stained face—possibly a red nose. But then, he was a priest. That made a difference.
"And now, what is the trouble? Has invention given out? No? Come, come then, everything else is bearable, isn't it? If I were an imaginative writer, that fear would never leave me, and would end by paralyzing my pen. I should have stage-fright every time I sat down opposite a sheet of paper. It has always been less of a marvel to me that a novel should be finished well than that it should be finished at all."
Althea hardly listened. She was wondering how she should express the things of this world in terms that a man of the other should understand; a necessity—let the prurient believe it or not—that makes confession a dry business for all parties.
"Father Vernon, has it ever occurred to you that I am a woman as well as a writer?"
"My dear, a very charming one."
"At least an honest one. Three years ago, you will remember, I came to you on quite an impersonal matter. You divined an inward trouble—saw that I had missed the peace which passes understanding, and offered me—how delicately, I shall never forget—your aid to attain it. I refused it. You never would guess what the refusal cost me."
"My dear——"
"Yes, yes; let me go on. I must have seemed churlish. But if principles are to be anything beyond mere idle words, they must be held to; and one of mine is that for a woman to invite sympathy is only a degree less shameful than for her to beg for love. The way of the devout woman with her director is hateful to me. This unseemly self-revelation from week to week is treachery—treachery to her own heart and to those whom she takes into it. Am I very heretical?"
"Oh, my child! How it would lighten my task were there more who thought like you."
"Before I left, you bade me, if ever I was in great trouble, to come to you again. And now——"