What she saw was not merely a church giving a sacrament. It was not the dramatic falling of a penitent at the feet of a priest. It was not a poor Frenchman of the hills screaming out his crime in the agony and fear of death.
What she saw was a world, herself standing all alone in it. What she saw was the soul of the 240 world giving up its sin into the scale of God from which––Heart break or world burn!––that sin must never be disturbed.
As she went slowly across the front of the room in answer to her name, a girl came out of one of the aisles and stood almost in her path. Ruth looked up and found herself staring dully into the fierce, piercing eyes of Cynthe Cardinal. She saw the look in those eyes which she had recognised for the first time that day at French Village––the terrible mother-hunger look of love, ready to die for its own. And though the girl said nothing, Ruth could hear the warning words: Remember! You love Jeffrey Whiting.
How well that girl knew!
Dardis had called Ruth only to contradict a point which he had not been able to correct in the testimony of Myron Stocking. But since he had dared to bring up the matter of Rafe Gadbeau to the Bishop, he had become more desperate, and bolder. Ruth might speak. And there was always a chance that the dying man had said something to her.
“You were with Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon when word was brought to him that suspicious men had been seen in the hills?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Was the name of Rogers mentioned by either Stocking or Whiting?”
“No, sir.”