“Come,” he threatened, “you’d best tell me.”
I was considering what I should do. I reddened excited under my mask,
and rose to my feet again. After all these months of obliteration, a
wonderful thought was beginning to dawn in me--the thought of my sex
as a possible factor in my redemption. For how long, my dear friend,
had I not lost the art to play it for the value of so much as a
sugar-plum? And what was there now to prevent me from reassuming that
charming confidence in men which so disarms them? Alas! it was a vain
recovery here--a waste of art on a material no more responsive to it
than a pulpit hassock.
“How did you know?” he repeated angrily.
“Because,” I whispered, blushing, and lingering over the sensation I
felt I was about to produce--“because--Father--I am a little daughter
of the Church.”
He had been gnawing his knuckles, as he bent his morose brows on me;
and at my words stopped suddenly, his great teeth bared, like a dog
looking up from a bone.
“I am the child of a great gentleman. I was stolen from my parents,” I
said, and clasped my hands to him. “I am not a boy at all, but a
girl.”
He leapt up as if I had struck him.
“How dare you!” he shouted; then, choking, in another hoarse reaction
to panic, “How dare you try to impose upon me!”
“I’m not!” I cried, in a childish fury of chagrin over his
insensibility. “It’s true, every word. My mother was a Sister of les
Madelonnettes, and I was stolen from her, and I want to be sent back.”
I did not in truth, save in so far as that way only lay my chance of
restoration to my darling father. But the point was inessential.
The priest’s eyes, dilated monstrosities, devoured me through their
lenses.
“Les Madelonnettes--the Magdalens!” he muttered, amazed and frowning.
His hand, caressing his chin, grated on the stubble of it. “Come,” he
said brutally, “I’m an old bird to be caught by chaff. Confess to me,
if you’re a Catholic, you wretched little sinner.”
I wanted nothing better. This sacrament of penance must convince and
win him. In a moment my young elastic soul had leapt the dark
interlude which divided me from my past, and my little feet were
tripping once more in fancy down the royal prince’s table. I fell on
my knees.
“Say your Confiteor,” he commanded harshly.