“I don’t know whether he is evil, I don’t know what he is.”
“I know he is not evil.”
The priest looked at her, wondering.
“You know—how?”
“My instinct,” she said, coming a step nearer, and putting her hand, too, on the gate near his. “Why should we desert him?”
“Desert him, Madame!”
Father Roubier’s voice sounded amazed.
“Yes. You say he needs prayers. I know it. Father, are not the first prayers, the truest, those that go most swiftly to Heaven—acts?”
The priest did not reply for a moment. He looked at her and seemed to be thinking deeply.
“Why did you send Monsieur Androvsky to me this afternoon?” he said at last abruptly.