第94章 CHAPTER XIII(8)

"Madame," he said, lowering his voice, "I did not speak quite frankly to you this afternoon. You may, or you may not, have understood what I meant. But now I will speak plainly. As a priest I warn you, I warn you most solemnly, not to make friends with this man."

There was a silence, then Domini said:

"Please give me your reason for this warning."

"That I can't do."

"Because you have no reason, or because it is not one you care to tell me?"

"I have no reason to give. My reason is my instinct. I know nothing of this man--I pity him. I shall pray for him. He needs prayers, yes, he needs them. But you are a woman out here alone. You have spoken to me of yourself, and I feel it my duty to say that I advise you most earnestly to break off your acquaintance with Monsieur Androvsky."

"Do you mean that you think him evil?"

"I don't know whether he is evil, I don't know what he is."

"I know he is not evil."

The priest looked at her, wondering.

"You know--how?"

"My instinct," she said, coming a step nearer, and putting her hand, too, on the gate near his. "Why should we desert him?"

"Desert him, Madame!"

Father Roubier's voice sounded amazed.

"Yes. You say he needs prayers. I know it. Father, are not the first prayers, the truest, those that go most swiftly to Heaven--acts?"

The priest did not reply for a moment. He looked at her and seemed to be thinking deeply.

"Why did you send Monsieur Androvsky to me this afternoon?" he said at last abruptly.

"I knew you were a good man, and I fancied if you became friends you might help him."

His face softened.

"A good man," he said. "Ah!" He shook his head sadly, with a sound that was like a little pathetic laugh. "I--a good man! And I allow an almost invincible personal feeling to conquer my inward sense of right! Madame, come into the garden for a moment."

He opened the gate, she passed in, and he led her round the house to the enclosure at the back, where they could talk in greater privacy.

Then he continued:

"You are right, Madame. I am here to try to do God's work, and sometimes it is better to act for a human being, perhaps, even than to pray for him. I will tell you that I feel an almost invincible repugnance to Monsieur Androvsky, a repugnance that is almost stronger than my will to hold it in check." He shivered slightly. "But, with God's help, I'll conquer that. If he stays on here I'll try to be his friend. I'll do all I can. If he is unhappy, far away from good, perhaps--I say it humbly, Madame, I assure you--I might help him. But"--and here his face and manner changed, became firmer, more dominating --"you are not a priest, and--"

"No, only a woman," she said, interrupting him.

Something in her voice arrested him. There was a long silence in which they paced slowly up and down on the sand between the palm trees. The twilight was dying into night. Already the tomtoms were throbbing in the street of the dancers, and the shriek of the distant pipes was faintly heard. At last the priest spoke again.

"Madame," he said, "when you came to me this afternoon there was something that you could not tell me."

"Yes."

"Had it anything to do with Monsieur Androvsky?"

"I meant to ask you to advise me about myself."

"My advice to you was and is--be strong but not too foolhardy."

"Believe me I will try not to be foolhardy. But you said something else too, something about women. Don't you remember?"

She stopped, took his hands impulsively and pressed them.

"Father, I've scarcely ever been of any use all my life. I've scarcely ever tried to be. Nothing within me said, 'You could be,' and if it had I was so dulled by routine and sorrow that I don't think I should have heard it. But here it is different. I am not dulled. I can hear.

And--suppose I can be of use for the first time! You wouldn't say to me, 'Don't try!' You couldn't say that?"

He stood holding her hands and looking into her face for a moment.

Then he said, half-humorously, half-sadly:

"My child, perhaps you know your own strength best. Perhaps your safest spiritual director is your own heart. Who knows? But whether it be so or not you will not take advice from me."

She knew that was true now and, for a moment, felt almost ashamed.

"Forgive me," she said. "But--it is strange, and may seem to you ridiculous or even wrong--ever since I have been here I have felt as if everything that happened had been arranged beforehand, as if it had to happen. And I feel that, too, about the future."

"Count Anteoni's fatalism!" the priest said with a touch of impatient irritation. "I know. It is the guiding spirit of this land. And you too are going to be led by it. Take care! You have come to a land of fire, and I think you are made of fire."

For a moment she saw a fanatical expression in his eyes. She thought of it as the look of the monk crushed down within his soul. He opened his lips again, as if to pour forth upon her a torrent of burning words. But the look died away, and they parted quietly like two good friends. Yet, as she went to the hotel, she knew that Father Roubier could not give her the kind of help she wanted, and she even fancied that perhaps no priest could. Her heart was in a turmoil, and she seemed to be in the midst of a crowd.