His voice had lost its vehemence, and his manner was strangely subdued and cold. The sort of gentle apathy it expressed, together with a certain sad, impersonal surprise at the difference between his own and the happier fortune with which he contrasted it, was more touching than any tragic demonstration.
As if she felt the fascination of the pathos which she could not fully analyze, the young girl sat silent. After a time, in which she seemed to be trying to think it all out, she asked in a low, deep murmur: “Why did you become a priest, then?”
“It is a long story,” said Don Ippolito. “I will not trouble you with it now. Some other time.”
“No; now,” answered Florida, in English. “If you hate so to be a priest, I can’t understand why you should have allowed yourself to become one. We should be very unhappy if we could not respect you,—not trust you as we have done; and how could we, if we knew you were not true to yourself in being what you are?”
“Madamigella,” said the priest, “I never dared believe that I was in the smallest thing necessary to your happiness. Is it true, then, that you care for my being rather this than that? That you are in the least grieved by any wrong of mine?”
“I scarcely know what you mean. How could we help being grieved by what you have said to me?”
“Thanks; but why do you care whether a priest of my church loves his calling or not,—you, a Protestant? It is that you are sorry for me as an unhappy man, is it not?”
“Yes; it is that and more. I am no Catholic, but we are both Christians”—
Don Ippolito gave the faintest movement of his shoulders.
—“and I cannot endure to think of your doing the things you must do as a priest, and yet hating to be a priest. It is terrible!”