Thus they escaped the worst portion of the storm, but the darkness endured; they remained standing looking at one another, and Pauline, though she was both cold and frightened, managed to give her habitual laugh.
"Because you are 'Father Rielle,'" she exclaimed, "you think you are entitled to pursue a recreant sheep of the flock even over here! Oh! it is not on account of the storm—I know that—that you follow me! I have seen this coming for some time, and I have feared it!"
The priest staggered, passed his hands over his eyes and made a hasty sign of the cross. Opportunity, propinquity, a sudden temptation—these had assailed him and for one moment all the devils of hell were let loose in this good man's brain and heart. The silence seemed eternal that followed on his movement; as the air lightened around them she fancied his countenance distorted by suffering, and his averted eyes spoke of his shame and contrition.
"My daughter," he said at length, "fear what you will but never again fear me. You witness my remorse, my tears—yes, behold, my daughter—and you know, you tell yourself that I cannot, will not harm you—nor any woman. But now you would hear what I would say, because you must not refuse. You have left our Holy Catholic communion, you are no longer daughter of the true Church, is it not so, my daughter?"
An old habit asserting itself, Pauline automatically answered; "Oui, mon père."
"You have gone on the stage, you have developed into a brilliant but wayward coquette; you have for your friend a woman who has left her husband and thinks about marrying another. Is this not so, my daughter?"
And again, despite her experience of his singular lapse from conduct,
Pauline's lips answered: "Oui, mon père."
"Worst of all, you have set yourself to fascinate and wound this young man, this stranger among us, and you are leading him on to think of you night and day, I suppose, as I do!"
"Mon père—do not confess it!"
"Why not? You will not use your knowledge of my secret since you will not be believed. I—thanks to my training and the example of my glorious Church—can choke, can bridle, can conceal this passion—but not so this other. Can you deny that you have been with him, encouraged him?"