and with a gesture of dissent. She began to breathe
freely. The room chilled rapidly. Father Honore closed the window and
took his stand on the hearth. Aileen raised her eyes to him. It seemed
as if she lifted the swollen reddened lids with difficulty.

"Father Honore," she said in a low voice, tense with suppressed feeling,
"dear Father Honore, the only father I have ever known, don't you know
_why_ I cannot go to Mrs. Googe's?--why I must not stay too long in
Flamsted?"

And looking into those eyes, that were incapable of insincerity, that,
in the present instance, attempted to veil nothing, the priest read all
that of which, six years ago on that never to be forgotten November
night in New York, he had had premonition.

"My daughter--is it because of Champney's prospective return within a
year that you feel you cannot remain longer with us?"

Her quivering lips gave an almost inaudible assent.

"Why?" He dared not spare her; he felt, moreover, that she did not wish
to be spared. His eyes held hers.

Bravely she answered, bracing soul and mind and body to steadfastness.
There was not a wavering of an eyelid, not a suggestion of faltering
speech as she spoke the words that alone could lift from her
overburdened heart the weight of a seven years' silence:

"Because I love him."

The answer seemed to Father Honore supreme in its sacrificial
simplicity. He laid his hand on her head. She bowed beneath his touch.

"I have tried so hard," she murmured, "so hard--and I cannot help it. I
have despised myself for it--if only he hadn't been put _there_, I think
it would have helped--but he is there, and my thoughts are with him
there--I see him nights--in that cell--I see him daytimes _breaking
stones_--I can't sleep, or eat, without comparing--you know. Oh, if he
hadn't been put _there_, I could have conquered this weakness--"

"Aileen, _no_! It is no weakness, it is strength."

Father Honore withdrew his hand, that had been to the broken woman a
silent benediction, and walked up and down the long room. "You would
never have conquered; there was--there is no need to conquer. Such love
is of God--trust it, my child; don't try any longer to thrust it forth
from your heart, your life; for if you do, your life will be but a poor
maimed thing, beneficial neither to yourself nor to others. I say,
cherish this supreme love for the man who is expiating in a prison; hold
it close to your soul as a shield and buckler to the s