rom Place-du-Bois."

"I believe you always speak with a purpose, Mrs. Lafirme: you have
somebody's ultimate good in view, when you say that. Is it your own,
or mine or whose is it?"

"Oh! not mine."

"I will leave Place-du-Bois, certainly, if you wish it."

As she looked at him she was forced to admit that she had never seen
him look as he did now. His face, usually serious, had a whole
unwritten tragedy in it. And she felt altogether sore and puzzled and
exasperated over man's problematic nature.

"I don't think it should be left entirely to me to say. Doesn't your
own reason suggest a proper course in the matter?"

"My reason is utterly unable to determine anything in which you are
concerned. Mrs. Lafirme," he said checking his horse and laying a
restraining hand on her bridle, "let me speak to you one moment. I
know you are a woman to whom one may speak the truth. Of course, you
remember that you prevailed upon me to go back to my wife. To you it
seemed the right thing--to me it seemed certainly hard--but no more
nor less than taking up the old unhappy routine of life, where I had
left it when I quitted her. I reasoned much like a stupid child who
thinks the colors in his kaleidoscope may fall twice into the same
design. In place of the old, I found an entirely new situation--horrid,
sickening, requiring such a strain upon my energies to live through
it, that I believe it's an absurdity to waste so much moral force for
so poor an aim--there would be more dignity in putting an end to my
life. It doesn't make it any the more bearable to feel that the cause
of this unlooked for change lies within myself--my altered feelings.
But it seems to me that I have the right to ask you not to take
yourself out of my life; your moral support; your bodily atmosphere. I
hope not to give way to the weakness of speaking of these things
again: but before you leave me, tell me, do you understand a little
better why I need you?"

"Yes, I understand now; and I thank you for talking so openly to me.
Don't go away from Place-du-Bois: it would make me very wretched."

She said no more and he was glad of it, for her last words held almost
the force of action for him; as though she had let him feel for an
instant her heart beat against his own with an echoing pain.

Their ways now diverged. She went in the direction of the house and he
to the store where he found Gregoire, whom he sent for his wife.

VI

One Night.

"Gr