"She used to put a rose on my plate... in the morning... before I'd go to work." Karras looked up with a question in his eyes. "Regan," Chris told him.

She looked down. "Yeah, that's right. I forget... you've never met her." She blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes. "Want some brandy in that coffee, Father Karras?" she asked.

"Thanks, I don't think so."

"Coffee's flat," she whispered tremulously. "I think I'll get some brandy. Excuse me." She quickly left the kitchen.

Karras sat alone and sipped bleakly at his coffee. He felt warm in the sweater that he wore beneath his cassock; felt weak in his failure to have given Chris comfort. Then a memory of childhood shimmered up sadly, a memory of Ginger, his mongrel dog, growing skeletal and dazed in a box in the apartment; Ginger shivering with fever and vomiting while Karras covered her with towels, tried to make her drink warm milk, until a neighbor came by and saw it was distemper, shook his head and said, "Your dog needed shots right away." Then dismissed from school one afternoon... to the street... in columns of twos to the corner... his mother there to meet him... unexpected... looking sad... and then taking his hand to press a shiny half-dollar piece into it... elation... so much money!... then her voice, soft and tender, "Gingie die...."

He looked down at the steaming, bitter blackness in his cup and felt his hands empty of comfort or of cure.

"...pious bastard!"

The demon. Still raging.

"Your dog needed shots right away...."

Quickly he returned to Regan's bedroom, where he held her while Sharon administered the Librium injection that now brought the total dosage up to five hundred milligrams.

Sharon was swabbing the needle puncture while Karras watched Regan, puzzled. The frenzied obscenities seemed to be directed at no one in the room, but rather at someone unseen--- or not present.

He dismissed the thought. "I'll be back," he told Sharon.

Concerned about Chris, he went down to the kitchen, where again he found her sitting alone at the table. She was pouring brandy into her coffee. "Are you sure you wouldn't like some, Father?" she asked.

Shaking his head, he came over to the table and sat down wearily. He stared at the floor.

Heard porcelain clicks of a spoon stirring coffee. "Have you talked to her father?" he asked.

"Yes. Yes, he called." A pause. "He wanted to talk to Rags."

"And what did you tell him?"

A pause. Then, "I told him she was out at a party."

Silence. Karras heard no more clicks. He looked up and saw her staring at the ceiling. And then he noticed it too: the shouts above had finally ceased.

"I guess the Librium took hold," he said gratefully.

Chiming of the doorbell. He glanced toward the sound; then at Chris, who met his look of surmise with a questioning, apprehensive lifting of an eyebrow.

Kinderman?

Seconds. Ticking. They waited. Willie was resting. Sharon and Karl were still upstairs. No one coming to answer. Tense, Chris got up abruptly from the table and went to the living room.

Kneeling on a sofa, she parted a curtain and peered furtively through the window at her caller.

Thank God! Not Kinderman. She was looking, instead, at a tall old man in a threadbare raincoat, his head bowed patiently in the rain. He carried a worn, old-fashioned valise. For an instant, a buckle gleamed in street-lamp glow as the bag shifted slightly in his grip.

The doorbell chimed again.

Who is that?

Puzzled, Chris got down off the sofa and walked to the entry hall. She opened the door only slightly, squinting out into darkness as a fine mist of rain brushed her eyes. The man's hat brim obscured his face. "Yes, hello; can I help you?"

"Mrs. MacNeil?" came a voice from the shadows. It was gentle, refined, yet as full as a harvest.

As he reached for his hat, Chris was nodding her head, and then suddenly she was looking into eyes that overwhelmed her, that shone with intelligence and kindly understanding, with serenity that poured from them into her being like the waters of a warm and healing river whose source was both in him yet somehow beyond him; whose flow was contained and yet headlong and endless.

"I'm Father Merrin."

For a moment she looked blank as she stared at the lean and ascetic face; at the sculptured cheekbones, polished like soapstone; then quickly she flung wide the door. "Oh, my gosh, please come in! Oh; come in! Gee, I'm... Honestly! I don't know where my..." He entered and she closed the door. "I mean, I didn't expect you until tomorrow!" "Yes, I know," she heard him saying.

As she turned around to face him, she saw him standing with his head angled sideways, glancing upward, as if he were listening--- no, more like feeling; she thought--- for some presence out of sight... some distant vibration that was known and familiar. Puzzled, she watched him. His skin seemed weathered by alien winds, by a sun that shone elsewhere, somewhere remote from her time and her place.

What's he doing?

"Can I take that bag for you, Father? It must weigh a ton by now."

"It's all right," he said softly. Still feeling. Still probing. "It's like part of my arm: very old...

very battered." He looked down with a warm, tired smile in his eyes. "I'm accustomed to the weight.... Is Father Karras here?" he asked.

"Yes, he is. He's in the kitchen. Have you had any dinner, incidentally, Father?"

He kicked his glance upward at the sound of a door being opened. "Yes, I had some on the train."

"Are you sure you wouldn't like something else?"

A moment. Then sound of the door being closed. He glanced down. "No, thank you."

"Gee, all of this rain," she protested, still flustered. "If I'd known you were coming, I could have met you at the station."

"It's all right."

"Did you have to wait long for a cab?"

"A few minutes."

"I take that, Father!"

Karl. He'd descended the stairs very quickly and now slipped the bag from the priest's easy grip and took it off down the hall.

"We've put a bed in the study for you, Father:" Chris was fidgeting. "It's really very comfortable and I thought you'd like the privacy. I'll show you where it is." She'd started moving, then stopped. "Or would you like to say hello to Father Karras?" "I should like to see your daughter first," said Merrin.

She looked puzzled "Right now, you mean, Father?"

He glanced upward again with that distant attentiveness. "Yes, now--- I think now."