thoughts, and he never seemed to dream
of approaching her now. Perhaps she would have given up the idea had not
each night the vision of a daughter playing with Paul under the plane
tree appeared to her. Sometimes she felt she _must_ get up and join her
husband in his room; twice, in fact, she did glide to his door, but each
time she came back, without having turned the handle, her face burning
with shame.

The baron was away, her mother was dead, and she had no one to whom she
could confide this delicate secret. She made up her mind, at last, to
tell the Abbe Picot her difficulty, under the seal of confession. She
went to him one day and found him in his little garden, reading his
breviary among the fruit trees. She talked to him for a few minutes
about one thing and another, then, "Monsieur l'abbe, I want to confess,"
she said, with a deep blush.

He put on his spectacles to look at her better, for the request
astonished him. "I don't think you can have any very heavy sins on your
conscience," he said, with a smile.

"No, but I want to ask your advice on a subject so--so painful to enter
upon, that I dare not talk about it in an ordinary way," she replied,
feeling very confused.

He put on his priestly air immediately.

"Very well, my daughter, come to the confessional, and I will hear you
there."

But she suddenly felt a scruple at talking of such things in the
quietness of an empty church.

"No, Monsieur le cure--after all--if you will let me--I can tell you
here what I want to say. See, we will go and sit in your little arbor
over there."

As they walked slowly over to the arbor she tried to find the words in
which she could best begin her confidence. They sat down, and she
commenced, as if she were confessing, "My father," then hesitated, said
again, "My father," then stopped altogether, too ashamed to continue.

The priest crossed his hands over his stomach and waited for her to go
on. "Well, my daughter," he said, perceiving her embarrassment, "you
seem afraid to say what it is; come now, be brave."

"My father, I want to have another child," she said abruptly, like a
coward throwing himself headlong into the danger he dreads.

The priest, hardly understanding what she meant, made no answer, and she
tried to explain herself, but, in her confusion, her words became more
and more difficult to understand.

"I am quite alone in life now; my father and my husband do not agree; my
mother is dead, and--