The voice was almost childlike in its appealing innocence. Sewell sat down opposite the girl and bent sympathetically forward. “Well?”
She waited a moment. Then, “I don't know how to begin,” she said hoarsely, and stopped again.
Sewell was touched. He forgot Lemuel; he forgot everything but the heartache which he divined before him, and his Christ-derived office, his holy privilege, of helping any in want of comfort or guidance. “Perhaps,” he said, in his loveliest way,—the way that had won his wife's heart, and that still provoked her severest criticism for its insincerity; it was so purely impersonal,—“perhaps that isn't necessary, if you mean beginning at the beginning. If you've any trouble that you think I can advise you in, perhaps it's better for both of us that I shouldn't know very much of it.”
“Yes?” murmured the girl questioningly.
“I mean that if you tell me much, you will go away feeling that you have somehow parted with yourself, that you're no longer in your own keeping, but in mine; and you know that in everything our help must really come from within our own free consciences.”
“Yes,” said the girl again, from behind the veil which completely hid her face. She now hesitated a long time. She put her handkerchief under her veil; and at last she said: “I know what you mean.” Her voice quivered pathetically; she tried to control it. “Perhaps,” she whispered huskily, after another interval, “I can put it in the form of a question.”
“That would be best,” said Sewell.
She hesitated; the tears fell down upon her hands behind her veil; she no longer wiped them. “It's because I've often—heard you; because I know you will tell me what's true and right—”
“Your own heart must do that,” said the minister, “but I will gladly help you all I can.”
She did not heed him now, but continued as if rapt quite away from him.