"It is Lieutenant Beverley, I suppose."
She gave him a quick contemptuous look, but turned it instantly into one of her tantalising smiles.
"Do you imagine that?" she demanded.
"Imagine it! I know it," he said with a hot flush. "Have I no sense?"
"Precious little," she replied with a merry laugh.
"You think so."
"Go to Father Beret, tell him everything, and then ask him what he thinks," she said in a calm, even tone, her face growing serious.
There was an awkward silence.
She had touched Rene's vulnerable spot; he was nothing if not a devout Catholic, and his conscience rooted itself in what good Father Beret had taught him.
The church, no matter by what name it goes, Catholic or Protestant, has a saving hold on the deepest inner being of its adherents. No grip is so hard to shake off as that of early religious convictions. The still, small voice coming down from the times "When shepherds watched their flocks by night," in old Judea, passes through the priest, the minister, the preacher; it echoes in cathedral, church, open-air meeting; it gently and mysteriously imparts to human life the distinctive quality which is the exponent of Christian civilization. Upon the receptive nature of children it makes an impress that forever afterward exhales a fragrance and irradiates a glory for the saving of the nations.