the fear lest the life
which I have led may count for nothing, may be regarded as only
sinfulness, because I have done God's work for her sake rather than
for the sake of His Christ, and that therefore as a punishment to me
she may still be withheld. Ah, I have fought against her memory,
trying to cling only to God! That has been useless. So I have gone on
doing my best for my fellow-men, hoping that He may overlook the
motive, and judging only by the work, may give me my reward in the
end,--may allow me to be with her."

"Antoine, I am a sinful man and one who is little qualified to judge
of God's purposes, but I think that He will grant you your request.
But if you, with all your goodness, are banished from her whom you
loved most on earth, how can I hope for success?"

Then the Jesuit turned round and faced him. "It was because I feared
for your success that I mentioned my own trouble," he said. "You are
planning to do a thing which is right in marrying this half-breed
girl--you owe it to her and to God, inasmuch as you have lived with
her. But you will be doing her a greater wrong than if you were to
leave her unmarried, if, when you have made her your wife, you think
only of the dead white woman. When the turmoil of living is over, you
want to meet and be worthy of the woman who wrote those letters, you
tell me; your best chance of success in that desire is in trying to
forget her in this world, by giving all your affection to the woman
who is your wife, and trusting to God's goodness to give you the
rewards which He knows that you covet after death. Don't make my
mistake--it means torture in this life, and, perhaps, disappointment
in the next. Be true to the choice which you have made, and leave the
rest to God's mercy. I have not been strong enough to do all that I
advise, for, though I love Christ, I am shamed into owning, old man
though I am, that I more often do His work in the hope of re-meeting
with a woman who is dead than out of loyalty to Christ Himself."

"Pere Antoine, you do not judge kindly of your own actions as Christ
would judge of them; you Catholics, in making Christ God, forget that
He also was a lonely man. I think it is not as a God, but as a peasant
that He will judge us, having knowledge of what we have suffered--if
He judges us at all. It is more likely that He will just be sorry for
us, that we ever thought that He would judge us."

"Whether I judge kindly or not, will you try to take