"It's no one to whom you need feel any opposition, even though it's some
one who can do for me what you cannot."

"What I cannot?"

"What you cannot; what no man can. _Asperges me hyssopo, et mundabor_.
Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Derek, He has
purged me with hyssop, even though it has not been in the way you think.
With the hyssop of what I've had to suffer He has purged me from so many
things that now I see I can safely commit my cause to Him."

"So that you don't need me?"

She looked at him in silence before she replied:

"Not for defence."

"Nor for anything else?"

She tried to speak, but her voice failed her.

"Nor for anything else?" he asked again.

Her voice was faint, her head sank, her body trembled, but she forced
the one word, "No."




XXIII