ight half smile. "In childhood I used to
lay some of my wildnesses on to the Indian side. I had a curious fancy
for a strain of Indian blood."

"But you have no Indian ancestry?"

"I think not. I am not so anxious for it now," laughing gayly. "But that
side of me protests against the servitude Father Gilbert so insists
upon. And I hate confession. To turn one's self inside out, to give away
the sacred trusts of others--"

"No, that is not necessary," he declared hastily.

"But when the other lives are tangled up with yours, when you can only
tell half truths--"

He smiled then. "Mademoiselle Jeanne, your short life has not had time
to get much entangled with other lives, or with secrets you are aware
of."

"I think it has been curiously entangled," she replied. "M'sieu
Bellestre, whom I have almost forgotten, M. Loisel--and the old
schoolmaster I told you of, who I fancy now was a sad heretic--"

She paused and flushed, while her eyes were slowly downcast. There was
Monsieur St. Armand. How could she explain this to a priest? And was not
Monsieur a heretic, too? That was her own precious, delightful secret,
and she would give it into no one's keeping.

She was very happy with all this mystery about her, he thought, very
simple minded and sweet, doing the whole duty of a daughter to this poor
Indian woman in return for her care. And when Pani was gone? She was
surely fitted for some other walk in life, but she was unconsciously
proud, she would not step over into it, some one must take her by the
hand.

"But why trouble about the Church, as you call it? It is the life one
leads, not the organization. Are these people down by the wharves and
those holes on St. Louis street, where there is drunkenness and gambling
and swearing, any the better for their confession and their masses, and
what not?"

"If I was the priest they should not come unless they reformed," and her
eyes flashed. "But when I turn away something calls me, and when I go
there I do not like it. They want me to go among the sisters, to be a
nun perhaps, and that I should hate."

"At present you are doing a daughter's duty, let that suffice. Pani
would soon die without you. When a new work comes to hand God will make
the way plain for you."

Jeanne gave an assenting nod.

"She is a curious child," the minister said to his wife afterward, "and
yet a very sweet, simple-hearted one. But to confine her to any routine
would make her most unhappy.