e consequences of their actions will be to
others as well as to themselves. If this previous examination proves
to them that for some reason or other they may act, they will always be
calm, assured that they will feel no remorse, which is only the reproach
of conscience."

"Without doubt what you say is to the point, but it is impossible for
me to accept it. If I have never committed crimes, I have often been
foolish and have committed faults, many of them deliberately, after the
examination of which you speak. I should have been, according to you,
perfectly placid and free from the reproach of conscience; however, the
next morning I woke unhappy, tormented, often overwhelmed, and unable to
stifle the mysterious voice that accused me."

"And in whose name did it speak, this voice, more vague than
mysterious?"

"In the name of my conscience, evidently."

"'Evidently' is too much, and you would be puzzled if called upon
to demonstrate this evidence; whereas, nothing is more uncertain and
elusive than the thing that is called conscience, which is in reality
only an affair of environment and of education."

"I do not understand."

"Does your conscience tell you it is a crime to love me?"

"No, decidedly."

"You see, then, that you have a personal way of understanding what is
good and bad, which is not that of our country, where it is admitted,
from the religious and from the social point of view, that a young
girl is guilty when she has a lover. Of course, you see, also, that
conscience is a bad weighing-machine, since each one, in order to make
it work, uses a weight that he has himself manufactured."

"However it is, you did right not to strangle Cafflie."

"Whom you, yourself, have condemned to death."

"By the hand of justice, whether human or divine; but not by yours, any
more than by Florentin's or mine, although we know better than any one
that he does not deserve any mercy."

"And you see I foresaw your objections, as I did not tighten his
cravat."

"Happily."

"Is it necessary to say 'happily'?"

CHAPTER X. SANIEL MAKES A RESOLUTION

This evening Phillis was obliged to be at home early, but she cleared
off the table, and put everything in order before leaving.

"You can breakfast on the remains of the chicken," she said, as she put
it in the pantry.

And as Saniel accompanied her with a candle in his hand, he saw that
she had thought not only of his breakfast for the following day, but