"I am going to." The response came prompt and hard.
"And what then?"
"I don't know—yet—;" her speech faltered; "but I want to try the stage. Every one says I have the voice for it, and I suppose I could make a hit in light operetta or vaudeville as well now as when I was a child. A few years more and I shall be too old."
"And you think you can enter into such publicity without protection?"
"Oh, I'm able to protect myself—I've done that already." She spoke with bitterness.
"True, you are a woman now—but still a young woman—"
Father Honoré stopped there. He was making no headway with her. He knew only too well that, as yet, he had not begun to get beneath the surface. When he spoke it was as if he were merely thinking aloud.
"Somehow, I hadn't thought that you would be so ready to leave us all—so many friends. Are we nothing to you, Aileen? Will you make better, truer ones among strangers? I can hardly think so."
She covered her face with her hands and began to sob again, but brokenly.
"Aileen, my daughter, what is it? Is there any new trouble preparing for you at The Bow?"