at night when I found you at the foot of the
Calvary?"

There, in the cool, deepening twilight, I told him my story, little by
little; sometimes at a loss for words, and always compelled to speak in
the simplest and most direct phrases. He listened, with no other
interruption than to supply me occasionally with an expression when I
hesitated. He appeared to understand me almost by intuition. It was
quite dark before I had finished, and the deep blue of the sky above us
was bright with stars. A glow-worm was moving among the tufts of grass
growing between the roots of the tree; and I watched it almost as
intently as if I had nothing else to think of.

"Speak to me as if I were your daughter," I said. "Have I done right or
wrong? Would you give me up to him, if he came to claim me?"

"I am thinking of thee as my daughter," he answered, leaning his hands
and his white head above them, upon the top of the stick he was holding,
and sitting so for some moments in silent thought. "Thy voice is not the
voice of passion," he continued; "it is the voice of conviction,
profound and confirmed. Thou mayst have fled from him in a paroxysm of
wrath, but thy judgment and conscience acquit thee of wrong. In my eyes
it is a sacrament which thou hast broken; yet he had profaned it first.
My daughter, if thy husband returned to thee, penitent, converted,
confessing his offences against thee, couldst thou forgive him?"

"Yes," I answered, "yes! I could forgive him."

"Thou wouldst return to him?" he said, in calm, penetrating accents, but
so low as to seem almost the voice of my own heart; "thou wouldst be
subject to him as the Church is subject to Christ? He would be thy head;
wouldst thou submit thyself unto him as unto the Lord?"

"I shivered with dread as the quiet, solemn tones fell upon my ear,
poignantly, as if they must penetrate to my heart. I could not keep
myself from sobbing. His face was turned toward me in the dusk, and I
covered mine with my hands.

"Not now," I cried; "I cannot, I cannot. I was so young, monsieur; I did
not know what I was promising. I could never return to him, never."

"My daughter," pursued the inexorable voice beside me, "is it because
there is any one whom thou lovest more?"

"Oh!" I cried, almost involuntarily, and speaking now in my own
language, "I do not know. I could have loved Martin dearly--dearly."

"I do not understand thy words," said Monsieur Laurentie, "but I
understand thy tears