Outside the confessional a number of men and women were seated on long forms; one or two were kneeling, their rosaries clicking as the beads ran through their fingers. Those seated, with eyes sparkling brightly whenever they turned their heads, looked like white-faced spirits. An old man was shuffling uneasily, his nailed boots rasping on the floor from time to time; a woman having been seized with the hiccough rose and went out, and the row on the seat gathered closer, each no doubt pleased at the prospect of getting in advance of at least one other sinner. Norah sat down at the end of the row, a strange fluttering in her heart, and her fingers opening and closing nervously. She felt that the penitents knew her, that they would arise suddenly and accuse her of her sins. A man opposite looked fixedly at her and she hung her head. The low mumbling voice of the priest saying the words of absolution over a sinner could be heard coming from the confessional. But had there ever been a sinner as bad as she was? Norah asked herself. For her sins it was so hard to ask forgiveness.
“Never, never will I get absolution,” she said under her breath.
Then she began to wonder if the young, pleasant-faced priest who talked to the potato-diggers was in the confessional. He would not be hard on her; he looked so kind and gentle!
“I’m afeared, very afeared,” she whispered to herself. “I’ll not go in this time; I’ll go away and come back again.”
But even as she spoke the woman with the hiccough came back and took up her position on the end of the seat. Norah found that she could not get away now without disturbing the woman. She bowed her head and began to pray.
III
SHE could not see the priest in the confessional, but could hear him breathing in short, laboured pants like a very fat old woman. It couldn’t be the young man, Norah thought, as she went down on her knees and began the “Confiteor.” The priest hurried over the words in a weary voice; Norah repeated them after him, stopping now and again to draw her breath. A sensation, almost akin to that which precedes drowning, gripped her throat.
“What sins have ye committed?” asked the priest. “Tell me the greatest first.”
“I am a woman of the streets.” She had now taken the plunge and felt calmer as she waited to be asked a question.
“God’s merciful,” said the priest, and his voice was tinged with interest. “Go on.”