“But I do care, I do care.  That’s why I’ve come here.”

“You are right to care if it is so,” said Father Robertson.

“Such lots of women wouldn’t,” she continued, in a quite different, almost cynical, voice.  “But that man is an exceptional man—­not in intellect, but in heart.  And I’m a very happy woman.  Perhaps you wonder what that has to do with it.  Well sometimes I see things through my happiness, just because of it; sometimes I see unhappiness through it.”

Her voice had changed again, had become much softer.  She drew her chair a little nearer to the fire.

“Do you ever receive confessions, Mr. Robertson—­as a priest, I mean?” she asked.

“Yes, very often.”

“They are sacred, I know, even in your church.”

“Yes,” he said, without emphasis.

His lack of emphasis decided her.  Till this moment she had been undecided about a certain thing, although she herself perhaps was not fully aware of her hesitation.

“I want to do a thing that I have never yet done,” she said.  “I want to be treacherous to a friend, to give a friend away.  Will you promise to keep my treachery secret forever?  Will you promise to treat what I am going to tell you about her as if I told it to you in the confessional?”

“If you tell it to me I will.  But why must you tell it to me?  I don’t like treachery.  It’s an ugly thing.”

“I can’t help that.  I really came here just for that—­to be treacherous.”

She looked into the fire and sighed.

“I’ve covered a great sin with my garment,” she murmured slowly, “and I repent me!”

Then, with a look of resolve, she turned to her white-haired companion.

“I’ve got a friend,” she said—­“a woman friend.  Her name is Cynthia Clarke. (I’m in the confessional now!) You may have heard of her.  She was a cause celebre some time ago.  Her husband tried to divorce her, poor man, and failed.”

“No, I never heard her name before,” said Father Robertson.

“You don’t read causes celebres.  You have better things to do.  Well, she’s my friend.  I don’t exactly know why.  Her husband was Councillor in my husband’s Embassy.  But I knew her before that.  We always got on.  She has peculiar fascination—­a sort of strange beauty, a very intelligent mind, and the strongest will I have ever known.  She has virtues of a kind.  She never speaks against other women.  If she knew a secret of mine I am sure she would never tell it.  She is thoroughbred.  I find her a very interesting woman.  There is absolutely no one like her.  She’s a woman one would miss.  That’s on one side.  On the other—­she’s a cruel woman; she’s a consummate hypocrite; she’s absolutely corrupt.  You wonder why she’s my friend?”

“I did not say so.”