“An angel, yes,” the priest went on, rising from his chair, “an angel whose immaculate truth has mirrored my falsehood in all its vileness and distortion—to whom, if it destroys me, I cannot devote less than a truthfulness like hers!”
“Hers—hers?” cried the painter, with a sudden pang. “Whose? Don’t speak in these riddles. Whom do you mean?”
“Whom can I mean but only one?—madamigella!”
“Miss Vervain? Do you mean to say that Miss Vervain has advised you to renounce your priesthood?”
“In as many words she has bidden me forsake it at any risk,—at the cost of kindred, friends, good fame, country, everything.”
The painter passed his hand confusedly over his face. These were his own words, the words he had used in speaking with Florida of the supposed skeptical priest. He grew very pale. “May I ask,” he demanded in a hard, dry voice, “how she came to advise such a step?”
“I can hardly tell. Something had already moved her to learn from me the story of my life—to know that I was a man with neither faith nor hope. Her pure heart was torn by the thought of my wrong and of my error. I had never seen myself in such deformity as she saw me even when she used me with that divine compassion. I was almost glad to be what I was because of her angelic pity for me!”
The tears sprang to Don Ippolito’s eyes, but Ferris asked in the same tone as before, “Was it then that she bade you be no longer a priest?”
“No, not then,” patiently replied the other; “she was too greatly overwhelmed with my calamity to think of any cure for it. To-day it was that she uttered those words—words which I shall never forget, which will support and comfort me, whatever happens!”
The painter was biting hard upon the stem of his pipe. He turned away and began ordering the color-tubes and pencils on a table against the wall, putting them close together in very neat, straight rows. Presently he said: “Perhaps Miss Vervain also advised you to go to America?”