Only when she had finished busying herself about the room making ready to close the place for the night did he rouse himself.
So still was he, and so absorbed that she thought he had fallen asleep, until she became aware of a flash from under the overhanging brows and heard him say, as if speaking to himself: "It was very good of you.

Yes, very good--of you--to do it, and--I suppose she never came back ?" "She never did," returned Kitty, drawing a chair away from the heat of the stove, "and I'm that sorry she didn't.

I'll fix the lights when ye've gone up.

Good night to ye." "Good night, Mrs.Cleary," and he left the room.
In the same absorbed way he mounted the stairs, opened his own door and, without turning up the gas, sank heavily into a chair, the link still held fast in his hand.

A moment later he sprang from his seat, stepped quickly to the gas-jet, turned up the light, and held one of the small buttons to the flame, as if to reassure himself of the initials; then with a smothered cry fell across the narrow bed, his face hidden in the quilt.
For an hour he lay motionless, his mind a seething caldron, above which writhed distorted shapes who hid their faces as they mounted upward.
When these vanished and a certain calm fell upon him, two figures detached themselves and stood clear: a woman cowering on a door-step, her skirts befouled with the slime of the streets, and a priest with hand upraised, his only weapon the symbol of his God..