As he ceased, Ringfield, by some extraordinary instinct which mastered him, at once fell upon his knees at the side of Father Rielle, who had taken a seat not far from the door, where he might command a view of the bridge in case of interruption, and with that dangerous hole in the footway in his memory.
"If I say 'Holy Father,' will that be right?"
"Quite right, my son. Have no fear. Say on."
Ringfield bowed his head on his hands and began:—
"Holy Father——"
The priest waited quietly. His thin sensitive visage was transfigured and his whole being uplifted and dignified as he thus became the Mediator between Man and God.
"Holy Father, I know no form of word——"
"That does not matter. Whether you cry 'Peccavi' or 'Father, I have sinned,' it is all the same."
"Holy Father, I have sinned, sinned grievously before God and Heaven, before men and angels, but most of all have I sinned before my own ideals and conceptions of what I meant to be—a Christian clergyman. Hear my confession, Holy Father; with you to love, love a woman, would be sin; it was not sin for me, and yet in loving a woman it became sin also with me, for it blotted out God and humanity. I not only loved—I also hated; I lived to hate. I hated while I was awake and while I slept, in walking, in eating, in drinking, so that my life became a burden to me and I forsook the throne of God in prayer."
The priest, in the moment's pause which had followed these words of self-abasement, had seen something across the river that claimed his attention, nevertheless he gravely encouraged the penitent.