e Bishop.

But this girl was different. You could not tell what she might do
under the test. If she stood the test, if she kept the seal unbroken
upon her lips, then would Cynthe be her willing slave for life. She
would love that girl, she would fetch for her, work for her, die for
her!

When that point-blank question came leaping upon the tortured girl in
the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl
stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask
her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in
pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw
the hunted agony in her eyes, a great light broke in upon the heart of
Cynthe Cardinal. Here was not a pale girl of the convent who could not
know what love was! Here was a woman, a sister woman, who could
suffer, who for the sake of one greater thing could trample her love
under foot, and who could and did sum it all up in one steady
word--"Nothing."

Cynthe Cardinal revolted. Her quickened heart could not look at the
torture of the other girl. She wanted to run forward and throw herself
at the feet of the other girl as she came staggering down from the
stand and implore her pardon. She wanted to cry out to her that she
must tell! That no man, alive or dead, was worth all this! For Cynthe
Cardinal knew that truth bitterly. Instead, she turned and ran like a
frightened, wild thing out of the room and up the street.

She had seen the Bishop come direct from the little church to the
court. And as she watched his face when he came down from the stand,
she knew instinctively that he was going back there. Cynthe
understood. Even M'sieur the Bishop who was so wise and strong, he was
troubled. He thought much of the young Whiting. He would have business
with God.

She slipped noiselessly in at the door of the church and saw the
Bishop kneeling there at the end of the pew, bowed and broken.

He was first aware of her when he heard a frightened, hurrying whisper
at his elbow. Some one was kneeling in the aisle beside him, saying:

_Mon Pere, je me 'cuse._

The ritual would have told him to rise and go to the confessional. But
here was a soul that was pouring its secret out to him in a torrential
rush of words and sobs that would not wait for ritual. The Bishop
listened without raising his head. He had neither the will nor the
power to break in upon that cruel story that had been torturing its
keepe