ot rest if you leave another to suffer for your deed.
Would he not have told you to tell and clear the other man?"

"To escape Hell," said the girl quickly, "yes. He would have said:
Tell everything; tell anything!" In the desolate forlornness of her
grief she had not left to her even an illusion. Just as he was, she
had known the man, good and bad, brave and cowardly--and had loved
him. Would always love him.

"We will not speak of Hell," said the Bishop gently. "In that hour he
would have seen the right. He would have told you to tell."

"But he confessed to M'sieur the Bishop himself," she retorted
quickly, still seeming to forget that she was talking to the prelate
in person, but springing the trap of her quick wit and sound Moral
Theology back upon him with a vengeance, "and he gave _him_ no leave
to speak."

The Bishop in a panic hurried past the dangerous ground.

"If he had left a debt, would you pay it for him, my daughter?"

"_Mon Pere_, with the bones of my hands!"

"Consider, then, he is not now the man that you knew. The man who was
blind and walked in dark places. He is now a soul in a world where a
great light shines about him. He knows now that which he did not know
here--Truth. He sees the things which here he did not see. He stands
alone in the great open space of the Beyond. He looks up to God and
cries: _Seigneur Dieu_, whither go I?

"And God replying, asks him why does he hesitate, standing in the open
place. Would he come back to the world?

"And he answers: 'No, my God; but I have left a debt behind and
another man's life stands in pledge for my debt; I cannot go forward
with that debt unpaid.'

"Then God: 'And is there none to cancel the debt? Is there not one in
all that world who loved you? Were you, then, so wicked that none
loved you who will pay the debt?'

"And he will answer with a lifted heart: 'My God, yes; there was one,
a girl; in spite of me, she loved me; she will make the debt right;
only because she loved me may I be saved; she will speak and the debt
will be right; my God, let me go.'"

The Bishop's French was sometimes wonderfully and fearfully put
together. But the girl saw the pictures. The imagery was familiar to
her race and faith. She was weeping softly, with almost a little break
of joy among the tears. For she saw the man, whom she had loved in
spite of what he was, lifted now out of the weaknesses and sins of
life. And her love leaped up quickly to the ide