Even as the priest spoke his face altered, His blinking eyelids shut suddenly and he stood up as if he were choking. Then he put one wavering hand as if groping his way towards the door.
"Where are you going?" asked the other in some wonder.
"If you ask me," said Father Brown, who was quite white, "I was going to pray. Or rather, to praise."
"I'm not sure I understand. What is the matter with you?"
"I was going to praise God for having so strangely and so incredibly saved me—saved me by an inch."
"Of course," said Race, "I am not of your religion; but believe me, I have religion enough to understand that. Of course you would thank God for saving you from death."
"No," said the priest. "Not from death. From disgrace."
The other sat staring; and the priest's next words broke out of him with a sort of cry.
"And if it had only been my disgrace! But it was the disgrace of all I stand for; the disgrace of the Faith that they went about to encompass. What it might have been! The most huge and horrible scandal ever launched against us since the last lie was choked in the throat of Titus Oates."
27
