ief in the face. It taught me, first, to accept it as a
just punishment for having married against the advice and wishes of my
father."

"Ah, do not abjure our past!" cried the young man; "the past which has
remained so dear to me through all."

"No, I do not abjure it," replied Maud, "for it was on recurring to
it--it was on returning to my early impressions--that I could find not
an excuse, but an explanation of your conduct. I remembered what you
related to me of the misfortunes of your childhood and of your youth,
and how you had grown up between your father and your mother, passing
six months with one, six months with the other--not caring for, not
being able to judge either of them--forced to hide from one your
feelings for the other. I saw for the first time that your parents'
separation had the effect of saddening your heart at that epoch. It
is that which perverted your character.... And I read in advance Luc's
history in yours.... Listen, Boleslas! I speak to you as I would speak
before God! My first feeling when that thought presented itself to my
mind was not to resume life with you; such a life would be henceforth
too bitter. No, it was to say to myself, I will have my son to myself.
He shall feel my influence alone. I saw you set out this morning--set
out to insult me once more, to sacrifice me once more! If you had been
truly repentant would you have offered me that last affront? And when
you returned--when they informed me that you had a broken arm--I wished
to tell the little one myself that you were ill.... I saw how much he
loved you, I discovered what a place you already occupied in his heart,
and I comprehended that, even if the law gave him to me, as I know it
would, his childhood would be like yours, his youth like your youth."

"Then," she went on, with an accent in which emotion struggled through
her pride, "I did not feel justified in destroying the respect so deep,
the love so true, he bears you, and I have come to say to you: You have
wronged me greatly. You have killed within me something that will never
come to life again. I feel that for years I shall carry a weight on my
mind and on my heart at the thought that you could have betrayed me as
you have. But I feel that for our boy this separation on which I had
resolved is too perilous. I feel that I shall find in the certainty
of avoiding a moral danger for him the strength to continue a common
existence, and I will continue it. But human