d out her hand and took her Bible from a table.
"Read that to yourself," she said, and, opening the Book, pointed to a
passage. He read it:

And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in
the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the
presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art
thou?

And he said, I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid,
because I was naked; and I hid myself.

And He said, Who told thee that thou wart naked? Hast thou eaten of
the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

Closing the Book, Charley said: "I understand--I see."

"Will you say a prayer with me?" she urged. "It is all I ask. It is the
only--the only thing I want to hurt you, because it may make you happier
in the end. What keeps us apart, I do not know. But if you will say one
prayer with me, I will keep on trusting, I will never complain, and I
will wait--wait."

He kissed both her hands, but the look in his eyes was that of a man
being broken on the wheel. She slipped to the floor, her rosary in her
fingers. "Let us pray," she said simply, and in a voice as clear as a
child's, but with the anguish of a woman's struggling heart behind.

He did not move. She looked at him, caught his hands in both of hers,
and cried: "But you will not deny me this! Haven't I the right to ask
it? Haven't I a right to ask of you a thousand times as much?"

"You have the right to ask all that is mine to give life, honour, my
body in pieces inch by inch, the last that I can call my own. But,
Rosalie, this is not mine to give! How can I pray, unless I believe!"

"You do--oh, you do believe in God," she cried passionately.

"Rosalie--my life," he urged, hoarse misery in his voice, "the only
thing I have to give you is the bare soul of a truthful man--I am that
now at least. You have made me so. If I deceived the whole world, if I
was as the thief upon the cross, I should still be truthful to you. You
open your heart to me--let me open mine to you, to see it as it is.
Once my soul was like a watch, cased and carried in the pocket of life,
uncertain, untrue, because it was a soul made, not born. I must look at
the hands to know the time, and because it varied, because the working
did not answer to the absolute, I said: 'The soul is a lie.' You--you
have changed all that, Rosalie. My