He led Cicely slowly and carefully out of the church, down the steps, through a small gate beside them, into a grassy yard.
“This is not cloister,” Father Morley said. “Our parochial school children’s playground. Sit here, my child, on this bench. There is a bell; I’ll ring for Brother Feely to bring you a cup of coffee and a few biscuits. Don’t try to speak; you can tell me what you will later.”
A lay-brother with a pale, patient face, and hair as red as Cicely’s own, came in response to Father Morley’s call, and quickly returned with a cup of the steaming beverage, and a few thin sweet biscuits on a plain white plate.
“Sip this, my daughter,” said the Jesuit, with his benignant smile; “you are exhausted.”
Cicely gratefully drank of the coffee, and revived as it coursed through her chilled body. She sat up after she had eaten and drank, and tried to smile at the priest. “You are very kind, Father Morley,” she said. “I must go. Thank you.”
“Without giving me something in return?” hinted Father Morley. “Aren’t you going to give me a wee bit of your confidence? What has gone wrong with you, my child?”
Cicely looked long into the steady, keen, sad, kindly eyes looking down into hers. She did not want to speak, but, characteristically, spoke the truth when she felt compelled to speak.
“I’m shocked by what I’ve found out to-day,” she said. “I’ve got to decide something. I may leave the Church; I don’t know. It’s that, or hurt someone dearer to me than my life.”
She waited for an explosion of protest from the Jesuit, but none came. Instead he said quietly: “Not much comparison, is there, between hurting a human being, and losing Almighty God, betraying your Master and damning your soul! But no one should decide a great matter hastily; you’ve felt this is the greatest of great matters, I see. That’s something. You couldn’t marry a man who had a living wife; all your decent Catholic womanhood, as well as your religion, is against it.”
Cicely sprang to her feet.