When he dropped the letter his hands, too, shook. There was a silence.
Slowly Eleanor dragged herself higher in her chair; she pushed her hat back from her forehead; she turned her white drawn face upon the priest.
'Father,' she said, bending towards him, 'you are a priest—and a confessor?'
His face changed. He waited an instant before replying.
'Yes, Madame—I am!' he said at last, with a firm and passionate dignity.
'Yet now you cannot act as a priest. And I am not a Catholic. Still, I am a human being—with a soul, I suppose—if there are such things!—and you are old enough to be my father, and have had great experience. I am in trouble—and probably dying. Will you hear my case—as though it were a confession—under the same seal?'
She fixed her eyes upon him. Insensibly the priest's expression had changed; the priestly caution, the priestly instinct had returned. He looked at her steadily and compassionately.
'Is there no one, Madame, to whom you might more profitably make this confession—no one who has more claim to it than I?'
'No one.'
'I cannot refuse,' he said, uneasily. 'I cannot refuse to hear anyone in trouble and—if I can—to help them. But let me remind you that this could not be in any sense a true confession. It could only be a conversation between friends.'