Her mind, her torture could go no farther. In that throe her soul was born, but she could endure no more.
How long she had knelt in the church she had no idea; she took no cognizance of her body, of its strained position upon the knees on the narrow kneeling-rest. It was growing dusk in the church; she must have been there long. There were more people moving up and down the aisles, and before the shrines; several were making the stations, some coming down the middle aisle, others going toward the high altar. Cicely saw none of these.
She swayed on her tired knees, her aching spine no longer supporting her, and she crumpled up sidewise, falling over the back of the pew upon which her arms had rested, her head upon them in such wise that no one noticed that she had fainted. Father Morley had come out through the sanctuary, into the church, summoned by the little electric bell, its button placed under the rail, near the votive-lights candelabrum. It called a priest of that Community to hear a confession when a priest was needed at another time than the regular days and hours upon which confessions were heard.
A man had gone into the confessional when Father Morley took his place in the centre, and had kissed and assumed the narrow stole which had hung across the door. The penitent took long, so long that some of the pious women kneeling at the side altars were interested in his case, and watched to see him emerge, speculating on the nature of his story; some of them said a little prayer for him that he would “come out all right,” for good women are always intensely interested in the reform of a possibly bad man.
At last the absolution had been given, the penitent lingered for a final question or two and Father Morley’s answers, then he departed to say his penance and pray his prayers before the great Pietà—which the interested pious women thought symptomatic.
Father Morley folded his narrow stole, hung it again on the confessional door, and came out, closing the low door carefully and noiselessly behind him. He came down the fast darkening church, walking with his long, easy stride, peering into the pews as he passed with his near-sighted gaze, looking vainly for a small book which he had lent to someone, and which that someone had telephoned him to say that she had left in a pew in the main aisle of the church, instead of returning it to the lay-brother at the house door, as she had set out to do.
Thus Father Morley came up to Cicely as she lay, fallen over the pew back, held up from a complete fall by her arms across the back of the pew in front of her, and her back wedged against the pew in which she had knelt.
“My daughter, are you ill?” asked the priest, pausing at Cicely’s side. As she did not answer, nor move, he bent down and touched her. Then he looked startled and turned her face toward him, lifting her slightly as he did so. “Cicely Adair!” he exclaimed aloud, instantly recognizing her, and remembering the name which she had given him. “My child, can you hear me? Are you ill?”
The easing of her position, her raised head, brought Cicely to part consciousness. With the help of Father Morley’s hands, supporting her beneath her arms, she got upon her feet, looking at him dazed, white, staring.
“Come out into the air, my dear,” said the Jesuit gently. “You are suffering. It is not bodily sickness, my poor girl! Let me help you out. Here, my hand under your elbow, so! That’s better. Now slowly; courage! Come into the pure, good air, Cicely Adair!”