"I had the purpose," she admitted haltingly. "I confess it. Is it not pitiful?" and the lily hand which had felt its way so pleadingly across the embroidered cushions opened and closed its fingers on nothing, with a movement that was convulsive and appealing beyond words.
"Pitiful," the minister groaned. "My God, it is tragic!"
"Yes," she went on presently, in a calmer voice that was more resigned and sadly reminiscent: "I purposed it."
And there she stopped. Her tone was as dry as ashes. This man had surprised her by revealing a startling amount of moral force, which had quickly and easily broken down her coolly conceived purpose to make him believe that his sense of hearing had played him false that night in the restaurant. She had, however, confessed only to what she knew he knew; but the roused conscience of the preacher of righteousness detected this and was not to be evaded. He proposed to confront this woman with her sin.
"You confess only to the purpose?" John demanded accusingly.
The glance of the woman fell before his blazing eye. She had meant to answer boldly, triumphantly; but the sudden fear that she might not be believed made her a coward, and forced the realization that she must not attempt to deceive this man in anything.
"Sometimes one says more than one is able to perform," she whispered weakly. "Sometimes a woman names a price, and does not know what the price means, and when the time of settlement comes, will not pay it—cannot pay it—because there is something in her deeper, more overruling than her own conscious will, something that refuses to be betrayed!" The last words were torn out of her throat with desperate emphasis.
John sat watching the woman critically, with an all but unfriendly eye, while she struggled over this utterance, yet the very manner of it compelled him to believe in her absolute sincerity at the moment. Her revelation was truthful, no doubt, but just what was she revealing? The substance was so contrary to his presumption that his comprehension was slow.
"You mean," he began doubtfully—
Marien took instant courage in his doubt; he was almost convinced.