"Oh! of course I believe."
"Well, I was not sure before." With a sigh he added, "Have you time to listen?"
"Yes, certainly."
It was midnight and they were alone. As he began in softest tones to tell the story of his inner life, she felt the delicacy of the soul that is hidden under the roughest exterior. He said, "I had the happiest home in all Paris. I married the woman I loved, and after twelve months a little boy came to our home. Three weeks after, my wife lost her reason, and now she is in an asylum. But there was still my little boy. He was a beautiful child. We ate together, slept together, walked and talked together. He was all the world to me. He was the first to greet me in the morning, and the first to welcome me in the evening when I came home from work. This went on till the sixth year struck, and then...." His lips twitched, and he turned his face away. His hearer softly said, "He died." He gave a scarcely perceptible nod, and smothered a groan. "And then," he continued, "I went to the devil. Before the open grave in the Père Lachaise cemetery, with hundreds of my comrades about me, I lifted my hand to heaven and cried, 'If there be a God, let Him strike me dead!'"
"But He did not strike you dead?"
"No."
"He is very gentle and patient with us all. And now you have come here to-night. Does it not seem to you a strange thing that you out of all the millions of France, and I out of all the millions of England should be all alone together here at midnight? How do you account for it? Isn't it because God thought of you, and loves you? ... Do you ever pray?"
"I pray? Oh, never! Perhaps I prayed as a child, but never now."
"But I pray," said the Capitaine, and, kneeling down, she prayed a double prayer, for herself as well as for him. She wanted this man's salvation for her own sake and the work's sake. For weeks she had been fighting and praying for a break, and she felt as if on the issue of this wrestling for a single soul depended the whole future of the work in France. While she prayed for his salvation from sin she was silently praying for her own deliverance from doubt and fear and discouragement. And both prayers were heard. When she opened her eyes, she saw his face bathed in tears. She knew that his heart was melted, and she spoke to him of the love of God.
"But I have hated Him. I have hated religion; I have come here to mock you; I have called you Jesuits."