"Any one has the right to change. I am glad that you have decided so splendidly. It is like you to know when you have been wrong. And now that you have really found out you can begin all over—study architecture—build something as great as the cathedral. Vows that have ceased to be real are much better broken."
Her words evolved a simple plan. She had no understanding of the disgrace attending an apostate priest of the Catholic faith. Father Barry knew that she was innocent, that she had no wish to tempt him. But longing for all that he might still receive swept away his reason. He thought only as a man.
"And you will help me?"
"Why not?" she answered.
"Because you do not understand; do not know what your asking me to begin life over implies." His mother's face beneath the lid of the casket was no whiter than his own. All that he had lived through in the last three days made fresh renunciation vain. Discarded vows fell away from him as a cast-off garment. He was simply begging life from the woman he loved.
"Not here!" she pleaded. "Do not forget where we are!" Her voice broke. "You are still a priest; your vows hold before the world. I will not listen to you. Everything must be changed—absolutely changed, before I can see you—ever again." Her anger restored him.
"I will do anything!" he promised.
"Then go abroad—at once," she entreated. Voices admonished her to be prudent. She moved away. "I will help you! help you! But you shall wait. Nothing must shadow your honest life to come." She spoke in French, fearing her words might reach the hall. Mrs. Grace stood outside the parlor door. Dreading to look upon death, she yet resented her confessor's neglect. Nuns had ceased to hold her from an evident living attraction, as she swept into the room. But she was scarcely satisfied; for the length of the casket divided her niece from Father Barry. The priest, unconscious of an intruder, wept out his shame above Isabel's lilies.