“It is perfectly clear,” said the suffragette, who felt curiously numb.
“Excuse me, but I do not wish that you should go away under the delusion that you are in the right though persecuted, and in your self-absorption proceed to make havoc of another field of work. Setting aside the fact that you have been guilty of bad faith towards us, you have approached the work from a wilfully wrong standpoint. You have mixed your despicable little political jealousies with Christian work, to the serious danger of young and innocent souls.”
“I worked for the honour of women, and you—possibly—for the honour of your God. Certainly your work sounds better—to men.”
“If there is a thing that women excel in, it is the art of evading the point,” said the priest bitterly. “The affair, bluntly put, is this: Jane Wigsky, an idle, vicious, and immoral girl, had the impudence to go to my very good friend, Mr. Smith, of Smith, Bird and Co., and, presuming on her showy appearance, to apply for a responsible post, a post which is in every way suited to be the reward of virtue, rather than something for the covetous to grasp at. Mr. Smith is, as I say, a friend of mine, and a most generous friend to the Church, having only last week presented a beautiful carved chancel screen. Naturally it was my duty to tell him all I knew about the girl.”
“And what did you know?”
“I am not obliged to answer to you for my statements, but, as a matter of fact, I told him that the girl was not a ‘stayer’—in colloquial language—and that she was of immoral tendency.”
“That was only what you fancied. What did you know?”
There was a swallowing sound in the priest’s throat, a sound as of one keeping his temper.
“May I ask if you are aware that the girl has now disappeared, with her lover?”
“But that was since you wrote.”