"You think any sin may be forgiven?" he said irrelevantly, with his face averted.
"That is a very wide question. I do not think St. Augustine himself could answer it in a word or in a moment. Forgiveness, I think, would surely depend on repentance."
"Repentance in secret—would that avail?"
"Scarcely—would it?—if it did not attain some sacrifice. It would have to prove its sincerity to be accepted."
"You believe in public penance?" said Sabran, with some impatience and contempt.
"Not necessarily public," she said, with a sense of perplexity at the turn his words had taken. "But of what use is it for one to say he repents unless in some measure he makes atonement?"
"But where atonement is impossible?"
"That could never be."
"Yes. There are crimes whose consequences can never be undone. What then? Is he who did them shut out from all hope?"
"I am no casuist," she said, vaguely troubled. "But if no atonement were possible I still think—nay, I am sure—a sincere and intense regret which is, after all, what we mean by repentance, must be accepted, must be enough."