"What do you think the Consul-General meant when he said Helena frightened him?"
"I think he meant that she's one of the girls who do things when they're in trouble—drown themselves, take poison, or something."
"My poor Helena! My poor Gordon!"
There was the rustling whisper of a prayer at the pillow, and then, for the weary and careworn old lady another day slid into night.
CHAPTER VIII
Meantime Gordon, with a heart filled with darkness, sat huddled up on his bed in the little guest-room of the Coptic Cathedral. On a table at his left a small green-shaded lamp was burning, and on a chair at his right sat the saintly old Patriarch, gently patting his bare arm and trying in vain to comfort him.
"Yes, God is merciful, my son, and it is just because we are such guilty creatures that our Lord came to deliver us."
"But you don't know, Father, you don't know," said Gordon.
"Know—what, my son?"
"You don't know what reason I have to reproach myself," said Gordon, and then, catching by the sure instinct of a pure heart some vague sense of Gordon's position, the old man began to talk of confession, wherein the soul of man lays down its sins before God and begins to feel as if it had wings.