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bit settled in his habits and way of thinking. Everybody in the neighborhood, storekeepers, Italian fruit dealers, Jewish tradesmen, Protestant business men and the policemen on the corners all knew the old priest. Every afternoon he walked out in his gray and shabby coat and his big body rolled along the street with his wide black hat square on top of his white head and bobbing up and down like a cork on a wave. Bits of hair stuck out at the sides of his hat, his face was always red as if he couldn’t get his breath, and half the time his eyes seemed to be closed. At four o’clock in the afternoon he went forth to his favorite coffee-shop where he sat down without removing his hat and ordered and ate with a deep expansive relish a club sandwich containing dainty bits of chicken breast and bacon and tomato and lettuce and toasted bread and two dill pickles. Everybody in the place stared at him because he looked so sober. He felt just as sober as he looked. At a marriage time in his church he was hostile to what he called pagan celebrations because he said marriage was a sacrament and therefore a serious business and so he was opposed to having rice thrown frivolously at thedoor of the church. Moreover, no marriage ceremony was performed later than eight o’clock in the morning.
    When Father Dowling reached the top of the stairs, he was seeing Father Anglin so vividly in his thoughts that he stood still, pondered a bit longer, lapping his lower lip over his long upper one, and said to himself, “Father Anglin has a beautiful Christian character, no doubt, but somehow I don’t think he would like to hear me talking about those girls.”
    So he went to his own room, and before he went to bed he prayed for a long time for the souls of Ronnie and Midge. He prayed that he might have the full care of their souls so he could safeguard them. But the best part of his prayer was when he was absolutely silent and very calm, and he could see Ronnie and Midge standing close together in the hotel room, dogged and puzzled. And he was so moved that when he got into bed he felt that his feeling for the girls was so intense it must surely partake of the nature of divine love.

 
    TWO
    T he second time Father Dowling went to see the two girls in the hotel was the evening of the first Thursday in February. All evening he had been hearing confessions. He sat in the confessional with his elbow on the rail by the grating, with the faint musk-like priest odor pervading the confessional box, listening tirelessly to girls and old men, and giving himself sympathetically to their sorrow for the slightest sin. But after an hour and a half he grew very weary. The last confession he heard was from a young hysterical girl who seemed to him to be making up a chain of small sins so that she could imagine herself full of remorse. Growing exasperated, he thrust his face against the wire grating and said sharply, “My goodness, child, you’re entitled as a human being to certain judgments about your fellow creatures. Every time you have an opinion about your neighbor you’re not committing a mortal sin. Don’t you understand that?” The girl was startled by his face and breath and moving lips so close to her, and dropping her head down in the darkness she whispered, “Yes, Father, I understand.” Then she seemed unable to lift her head. Father Dowling, giving her absolution very quickly,wondered whether he should explain that a priest ought not to be worried by such trifles, but he smiled as he saw her standing up hurriedly, and when she swung aside the curtain and went out he leaned back with relief.
    For a long time he waited and no one entered the confessional. He waited and reflected on the young girl’s imagined sorrow, her fictitious sin and her fancied penitence, and he suddenly remembered the two girls, Midge and Ronnie. It seemed to him sitting there silently in the darkness, with one hand twisting