This time, before he could stop her, she took his hand and kissed it.
"There was little use in my coming today," she said, "except to thank you."
"Why, I do not quite understand you. What for?" asked the rector in surprise.
"For answering my question."
"Tell me?" he replied.
"You've known me a long time," she answered, "and being Jimmy Duke, it isn't necessary for me to tell you how I've lived. But you and me—once youth is gone, sir, and people are a long time old. I've thought of this a great deal lately, and I've been trying to decide what's right and what's wrong.... Then I read in the papers about you. About the things you preach and the like, and I knew you could tell me. I knew you'd know whether good people are faking, and which life is best. You see, I'd never thought of it in all my life before until just a little while ago. Just a month or such a matter."
"And now?" asked the Shepherd of St. Mark's.
"I could have left the old life years ago if I had wanted to," she continued, ignoring his question. "There is a man—well, there's several of them—but this a special one, who, for years, has wanted me to marry him. I always liked him better than anybody I knew, but I just couldn't give up the life. He is a plain man in a little village in Missouri, and I thought I'd die if I went. He offered to move to the city and I was afraid for him. You see I just didn't know what was good and what was bad, yet I didn't want this man to become like other men I knew."
"Tell me, what are you going to do?" he asked eagerly. He had almost said, "Tell me what to do."
"Well," she answered, "since I have been thinking it all over, things as they are have become empty. There is no joy in it, and I am weary of it all.... Yesterday I came to you. I wanted to ask you whether it was best or not to leave the old life. But I did not have to ask you. I saw how it was when you told me what you had done. And O, how I thank you for straightening it all out for me. Besides," she added with hesitancy, "after I left you last night I telegraphed for the man in the little village out west."