oman, with whom Josephine
had passed the night. It was not a case in which death was sad; it was
life, not death, that was sad for the wandering brain. But Josephine
could tell how in those last nights the poor mother had found peace in
the presence of her supposed child.

"She curls my hair round her thin fingers and seems so happy," said
Josephine.

She did not say that the thin hands had fingered her wedding-ring; but
Caius thought of it, and that brought him back the remembrance of
something that had to be said that must be said then, or every moment
would become a sin of weak delay.

"I want to tell you," he began--"I know I must tell you--I don't know
exactly why, but I must--I am sorry to say anything to remind you--to
distress you--but I hated Le Maitre! Looking back, it seems to me that
the only reason I did not kill him was that I was too much of a coward."

Josephine looked off upon the sea. The wearied pained look that she used
to wear when the people were ill about her, or that she had worn when
she heard Le Maitre was returning, came back to her face, so that she
seemed not at all the girl who had been laughing with him a minute
before, but a saint, whose image he could have worshipped. And yet he
saw then, more clearly than he had ever seen, that the charm, the
perfect consistency of her character, lay in the fact that the childlike
joy was never far off from the woman's strength and patience, and that a
womanly heart always underlay the merriest laughter.

They stood silent for a long time. It is in silence that God's creation
grows.

At length Josephine spoke slowly:

"Yes, we are often very, very wicked; but I think when we are so much
ashamed that we have to tell about it--I think it means that we will
never do it again."

"I am not good enough to love you," said Caius brokenly.

"Ah! do not say that"--she turned her face away from him--"remember the
last time you spoke to me upon the end of the dune."

Caius went back to the shore to get the boat that lay at the foot of the
chine. The colt was allowed to enjoy his paradise of island flowers in
peace.

THE END.

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APPLETON'S TOWN AND COUNTRY LIBRARY.

PUBLISHED SEMIMONTHLY.

1. _The Steel Hammer._ By LOUIS ULBACH.
2. _Eve._ A Novel. By S. BARING-GOULD.
3. _For Fifteen Years._ A Sequel to The Steel Hammer. By LOUIS ULBACH.
4. _A Counsel of Perfection._ A Novel. By LUCAS MALET.
5. _The Deemster._ A Romance