t in inexhaustible love; for that other I should not have known what
sacrifice meant, all had been delight. In this, monsieur, my instincts
are stronger than reason, stronger than religion or all else in me. Does
the woman who is neither wife nor mother sin in wishing to die when, for
her misfortune, she has caught a glimpse of the infinite beauty of love,
the limitless joy of motherhood? What can become of her? _I_ can tell
you what she feels. I cannot put that memory from me so resolutely but
that a hundred times, night and day, visions of a happiness, greater
it may be than the reality, rise before me, followed by a shudder which
shakes brain and heart and body. Before these cruel visions, my feelings
and thoughts grow colorless, and I ask myself, 'What would my life have
been _if_----?'"

She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.

"There you see the depths of my heart!" she continued. "For _his_
child I could have acquiesced in any lot however dreadful. He who died,
bearing the burden of the sins of the world will forgive this thought
of which I am dying; but the world, I know, is merciless. In its ears
my words are blasphemies; I am outraging all its codes. Oh! that I could
wage war against this world and break down and refashion its laws
and traditions! Has it not turned all my thoughts, and feelings, and
longings, and hopes, and every fibre in me into so many sources of pain?
Spoiled my future, present, and past? For me the daylight is full of
gloom, my thoughts pierce me like a sword, my child is and is not.

"Oh, when Helene speaks to me, I wish that her voice were different,
when she looks into my face I wish that she had other eyes. She
constantly keeps me in mind of all that should have been and is not. I
cannot bear to have her near me. I smile at her, I try to make up to
her for the real affection of which she is defrauded. I am wretched,
monsieur, too wretched to live. And I am supposed to be a pattern wife.
And I have committed no sins. And I am respected! I have fought down
forbidden love which sprang up at unawares within me; but if I have kept
the letter of the law, have I kept it in my heart? There has never been
but one here," she said, laying her right hand on her breast, "one and
no other; and my child feels it. Certain looks and tones and gestures
mould a child's nature, and my poor little one feels no thrill in the
arm I put about her, no tremor comes into my voice, no softness into m