The lady in furs had already taken her place at one of the confessional
boxes, and as there seemed to be no other that was occupied by a priest,
I knelt on a chair in the nave and tried to fix my mind on the prayers
(once so familiar) for the examination of conscience before confession:
"_Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, dispel the darkness of my heart, that I may
bewail my sins and rightly confess them_."
But the labouring of my spirit was like the flight of a bat in the
daylight. Though I tried hard to keep my mind from wandering, I could
not do so. Again and again it went back to the lady in furs with the
coroneted carriage and the high-stepping horses.
She was about my own age, and she began to rise before my tightly closed
eyes as a vision of what I might have been myself if I had not given up
everything for love--wealth, rank, title, luxury.
God is my witness that down to that moment I had never once thought I
had made any sacrifice, but now, as by a flash of cruel lightning, I saw
myself as I was--a peeress who had run away from her natural condition
and was living in the slums, working like any other work-girl.
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