And then in a low voice, as if afraid of being overheard, she told me how she came to be there—­that the woman who had travelled with me in the train from Liverpool, seeing my father’s offer of a reward, had written to him to say that she knew where I was and only needed somebody to establish my identity; that my father wished to come to London for this purpose, but had been forbidden by his doctor; that our parish priest, Father Donovan, had volunteered to come instead, but had been prohibited by his Bishop; and finally that my father had written to his lawyers in London, and Father Dan to her, knowing that she and I had been together at the Sacred Heart in Rome, and that it was her work now to look after lost ones and send them safely back to their people.

“And now the lawyer and the doctors are downstairs,” she said in a whisper, “and they are only waiting for me to say who you are that they may apply for an order to send you home.”

This terrified me so much that I made a fervent appeal to Mildred to save me.

“Oh, Mildred, save me, save me,” I cried.

“But how can I? how can I?” she asked.

I saw what she meant, and thinking to touch her still more deeply I told her the rest of my story.

I told her that if I had fled from my husband’s house it was not merely because he had been cruel and brutal to me, but because I, too, loved somebody else—­somebody who was far away but was coming back, and there was nothing I could not bear for him in the meantime, no pain or suffering or loneliness, and when he returned he would protect me from every danger, and we should love each other eternally.

If I had not been so wildly agitated I should have known that this was the wrong way with Mildred, and it was not until I had said it all in a rush of whispered words that I saw her eyes fixed on me as if they were about to start from their sockets.

“But, my dear, dear child,” she said, “this is worse and worse.  Your father and your husband may have done wrong, but you have done wrong too.  Don’t you see you have?”

I did not tell her that I had thought of all that before, and did not believe any longer that God would punish me for breaking a bond I had been forced to make.  But when she was about to rise, saying that after all it would be a good thing to send me home before I had time to join my life to his—­whoever he was—­who had led me to forget my duty as a wife, I held her trembling hands and whispered: 

“Wait, Mildred.  There is something I have not told you even yet.”

“What is it?” she asked, but already I could see that she knew what I was going to say.

“Mildred,” I said, “if I ran away from my husband it was not merely because I loved somebody else, but because. . . .”

I could not say it.  Do what I would I could not.  But holy women like Mildred, who spend their lives among the lost ones, have a way of reading a woman’s heart when it is in trouble, and Mildred read mine.