"You say that you wish to 'confide something' to me 'under the seal of Confession,' and you are not a Catholic!"
"No, I am not! I suppose I would be called—a sort of Christian, though." She said it haltingly. "Does my not being a Catholic prevent you listening to anything I ... want to say?"
The dry voice came back:
"I do not refuse to hear what you have to say. But Confession, Absolution, and Penance are Catholic Sacraments. I cannot extend the benefits of the Church to one who stands without her pale."
"I'm sorry! ... I suppose, I really haven't got the right to ask advice from you, or to expect you to keep anything—secret?"
There was a little old man's cough. The dry voice followed:
"I did not say that. As a priest, I am bound to give good counsel to those who ask it. And I promise you, also as a priest, to respect your confidence.... Now if you desire to go on—for I have several penitents waiting—I will ask you to do so. Be clear and truthful and brief. Mention no person by name. Let there be no exaggeration. Now begin! ..."
"It's like this..." And she had blurted out the ugly, sordid story, that in the plain, unvarnished narration grew uglier and more sordid still.
He had listened without the movement of an eyebrow or the twitch of a muscle. At certain points where she had deviated from the sheer fact by a mere hairsbreadth the dry little cough had interjected: "Think again!" When she touched upon the circumstances that had resulted in "another man's" offer of marriage:
"You have accepted this other?" he had asked, and followed her affirmative by saying, quietly, just as he had told her she was not a Catholic: "You have not told him of—what has taken place. Is he an honourable, upright man?"