f the town? Do you
know the deep pool beneath the bridge where the water turns around?
Well, I had washed you and dressed you.... I was going to put you
_there_.... It was then that Julia came."

He turned upon her a face which it seemed to her never again could be
happy and free from care.

"I didn't know all this, Mother," said he, quietly, whitely. "I ask your
pardon. I ask you to forgive me."

"No, I have told you I wanted to spare you all this--I wanted that door
to remain closed forever. But now it is open--you have opened it. I will
have to tell you what there is behind."

It seemed many moments before she could summon self-control to go on.

"...So we two sat here in this little room, Julia and I. You were in my
lap, holding up your hands and kicking up your feet, and we two wept
over you--we prayed over you, too--she, that little crippled girl,
hopeless, who could never have a boy of her own! I told her what I was
going to do with you. She fought me and took you away from me.... And
she saved you ... and she saved me.

"So now you have it." He heard her voice trailing on somewhere at a
distance which seemed immeasurable. "You owe your life not to one woman,
but to two, after all. Now you know why I called you Dieudonne. God sent
you to me. As I have known how, I have resolved to pay my debt to
God--for you. I want to pity, not hate. I want to be grateful. I want to
be fair, if I can learn how."

Aurora spoke no more for some moments, nor did her son.

"We two talked it all over between us," said she after a time. "She
asked me then, once, who was your father--Julia did. I said he was poor.
I told her never to ask me again. She never has. Oh, a good woman, Julia
Delafield--fine, fine as the Lord ever made!

"But she knew--we both knew--that I did not have the means of bringing
you up. We put our hearts together--to own you. We put our little purses
together--to bring you up. She took you away from me, pretty soon. She
sent you to some of her people, very distant relatives. They were poor,
too, but they took you in and they never knew--they died, both of them,
who took you in.

"Then for a time we sent you to an institution for orphans. But we told
everybody here that you had died. I told him so--your--your father--and
I forbade him ever to speak to me again. I told you he was dead. I told
him you were dead. He _is_ dead. So are _you_ dead. But all the dead
have come to life. The lost is found. Oh, Do