“Yes, Father.”
“Yet you do not wish to be frank with me. Isn’t that true?”
There was a piercing look in the eyes he fixed upon her.
“Yes,” she answered bravely.
“Why? Cannot you—at least will not you tell me?”
A similar reason to that which had caused her to refuse to hear what the Diviner had seen in the sand caused her now to answer:
“There is something I cannot say. I am sure I am right not to say it.”
“Do you wish me to speak frankly to you, my child?”
“Yes, you may.”
“You have told me enough of your past life to make me feel sure that for some time to come you ought to be very careful in regard to your faith. By the mercy of God you have been preserved from the greatest of all dangers—the danger of losing your belief in the teachings of the only true Church. You have come here to renew your faith which, not killed, has been stricken, reduced, may I not say? to a sort of invalidism. Are you sure you are in a condition yet to help”—he hesitated obviously, then slowly—“others? There are periods in which one cannot do what one may be able to do in the far future. The convalescent who is just tottering in the new attempt to walk is not wise enough to lend an arm to another. To do so may seem nobly unselfish, but is it not folly? And then, my child, we ought to be scrupulously aware what is our real motive for wishing to assist another. Is it of God, or is it of ourselves? Is it a personal desire to increase a perhaps unworthy, a worldly happiness? Egoism is a parent of many children, and often they do not recognise their father.”