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Mrs Satterthwaite sat on the edge of her chair; she had always the air of being just about to go out somewhere or of having just come in and being on the point of going to take her things off. She said:

'There's been a telegram waiting for her all the afternoon. I knew she was coming.'

Father Consett said:

'I saw it in the rack myself. I misdoubted it.' He added: 'Oh dear, oh dear! After all we've talked about it; now it's come.'

Mrs Satterthwaite said:

'I've been a wicked woman myself as these things are measured; but...

Father Consett said:

'Ye have! It's no doubt from you she gets it, for your husband was a good man. But one wicked woman is enough for my contemplation at a time. I'm no St Anthony...The young man says he will take her back?'

'On conditions,' Mrs Satterthwaite said. 'He is coming here to have an interview.'

The priest said:

'Heaven knows, Mrs Satterthwaite, there are times when to a poor priest the rule of the Church as regards marriage seems bitter hard and he almost doubts her inscrutable wisdom. He doesn't mind you. But at times I wish that that young man would take what advantage--it's all there is!--that he can of being a Protestant and divorce Sylvia. For I tell you there are bitter things to see amongst my flock over there...' He made a vague gesture towards the infinite...'And bitter things I've seen, for the heart of man is a wicked place. But never a bitterer than this young man's lot.'

'As you say,' Mrs Satterthwaite said, 'my husband was a good man. I hated him, but that was as much my fault as his. More! And the only reason I don't wish Christopher to divorce Sylvia is that it would bring disgrace on my husband's name. At the same time, Father...'

The priest said:

'I've heard near enough.'

'There's this to be said for Sylvia,' Mrs Satterthwaite went on. 'There are times when a woman hates a man--as Sylvia hates her husband...I tell you I've walked behind a man's back and nearly screamed because of the desire to put my nails into the veins of his neck. It was a fascination. And it's worse with Sylvia. It's a natural antipathy.'

'Woman!' Father Consett fulminated, 'I've no patience wid ye! If the woman, as the Church directs, would have children by her husband and live decent, she would have no such feelings. It's unnatural living and unnatural practices that cause these complexes. Don't think I'm an ignoramus, priest if I am.'

Mrs Satterthwaite said:

'But Sylvia's had a child.'

Father Consett swung round like a man that has been shot at.

'Whose?' he asked, and he pointed a dirty finger at his interlocutress. 'It was that blackguard Drake's, wasn't it? I've long suspected that.'

'It was probably Drake's,' Mrs Satterthwaite said.

'Then,' the priest said, 'in the face of the pains of the hereafter how could you let that decent lad in the hotness of his sin...?'

'Indeed,' Mrs Satterthwaite said, 'I shiver sometimes when I think of it. Don't believe that I had anything to do with trepanning him. But I couldn't hinder it. Sylvia's my daughter, and dog doesn't eat dog.'

'There are times when it should,' Father Consett said contemptuously.

'You don't seriously,' Mrs Satterthwaite said, 'say that I, a mother, if an indifferent one, with my daughter appearing in trouble, as the kitchenmaids say, by a married man--that I should step in and stop a marriage that was a Godsend...'

'Don't,' the priest said, 'introduce the sacred name into an affair of Piccadilly bad girls...' He stopped. 'Heaven help me,' he said again, 'don't ask me to answer the question of what you should or shouldn't have done. You know I loved your husband like a brother, and you know I've loved you and Sylvia ever since she was tiny. And I thank God that I am not your spiritual adviser, but only your friend in God. For if I had to answer your question I could answer it only in one way.' He broke off to ask: 'Where is that woman?'

Mrs Satterthwaite called:

'Sylvia! Sylvia! Come here!'

A door in the shadows opened and light shone from another room behind a tall figure leaning one hand on the