assed
the dusky window. He would not listen to my entreaties to be allowed to
join him in his task. It was a malignant case, he said, and as my
husband was unconscious, I could do him no good by running the risk of
being near him.

An invisible line encircled the pestilential place, which none of us
dare break through without the permission of the cure, though any one of
the villagers would have rejoiced if he had summoned them to his aid. A
perpetual intercession was offered up day and night, before the high
altar, by the people, and there was no lack of eager candidates ready to
take up the prayer when the one who had been praying grew weary. On the
third morning I felt that they were beginning to look at me with altered
faces, and speak to me in colder accents. If I were the means of
bringing upon them the loss of their cure, they would curse the day he
found me and brought me to his home. I left the village street half
broken-hearted, and wandered hopelessly down to my chosen post.

I thought I was alone, but as I sat with my head bowed down upon my
hands, I felt a child's hand laid upon my neck, and Minima's voice spoke
plaintively in my ear.

"What is the matter, Aunt Nelly?" she asked. "Everybody is in trouble,
and mademoiselle says it is because your husband is come, and Monsieur
Laurentie is going to die for his sake. She began to cry when she said
that, and she said, 'What shall we all do if my brother dies? My God!
what will become of all the people in Ville-en-bois?' Is it true? Is
your husband really come, and is he going to die?"

"He is come," I said, in a low voice; "I do not know whether he is going
to die."

"Is he so poor that he will die?" she asked again. "Why does God let
people be so poor that they must die?".

"It is not because he is so poor that he is ill," I answered.

"But my father died because he was so poor," she said; "the doctors told
him he could get well if he had only enough money. Perhaps your husband
would not have died if he had not been very poor."

"No, no," I cried, vehemently, "he is not dying through poverty."

Yet the child's words had a sting in them, for I knew he had been poor,
in consequence of my act. I thought of the close, unwholesome house in
London, where he had been living. I could not help thinking of it, and
wondering whether any loss of vital strength, born of poverty, had
caused him to fall more easily a prey to this fever. My brain was
burdened with