ht her to adore symbolised neither love nor rest
for them. How many stories of oppression, and cruelty, and
hopelessness had she listened to on the voyage from such as she could
understand? It was not the dream of money alone that brought them; it
was because, they had told her over and over again, that here they had
heard was the land of freedom, that here they could work with no
tyranny to rob them of their toil or of their souls, that here they
were to know happiness because here was liberty.

How they laughed, and talked, and sobbed, and whispered around her now!
How they crowded, and pushed, and swayed in their excitement! How
eager some were, how dazed and frightened were others! What a riot of
colour and strange dress the women and the men wore! How they clung to
their bundles, as instinctively she clung to hers!

What did it mean, that word--liberty? She too, had come for liberty.
She, too, had fled from her native country; she, too, had fled to seek
freedom from the scenes and memories that were there. That day when
she had gone so blindly to the _Gare St. Lazare_ and a train had taken
her to Havre, that day when she had no thought of any definite place to
go save that she must first of all leave Paris and then go far away, it
had seemed like an answer to her perplexity when, in Havre, she had
seen the sign in the window of the steamship office about the ship
sailing for America from there. And she had bought a ticket; and
then--and then that night, here, here on the ship, Jean had come to her.

Her lips quivered suddenly, and her eyes filled with tears. None, none
but the _bon Dieu_ and herself knew how near she had come that night to
yielding to her love; none else knew how through that brave, splendid
act of Jean's her love had seemed suddenly a thousand-fold greater,
making it that much the harder to deny, as it pleaded with her to
answer the cry of her soul. Oh, it had been so hard, so hard before to
let Jean go, to send him from her--but that night when she had turned
from him here upon the deck it had been as though she were walking out
into some cold, dread place of eternal darkness, where there was no
life, no living thing, and all was utter desolation. Why--why had she
done it? She had asked herself that a thousand times in the days since
then, in the nights when she had lain sleepless in her bunk; and yet,
even while she asked, the answer was always present, always there,
repeating itse