't you come up all Winter and see? Why
didn't you come up when she was nursing the dirty French babies
through the black diphtheria, when their own mothers were afraid of
them? Why didn't you come see when she was helping the mothers up
there to get into their houses and make the houses warm before the
coming of the Winter, though she had no house of her own? Why didn't
you come see when she nearly got her death from the 'mmonia caring for
old Robbideau Laclair in his house that had no roof on it, till she
shamed the lazy men to go and fix that roof? Did you ask somebody
then? Why didn't you come see?"

"Well," Jeffrey defended, "I didn't know about any of those things.
And we had plenty to do here--our place and my mother and all. I
didn't see her at all till Easter Sunday. I sneaked up to your church,
just to get a look at her. She saw me. But she didn't seem to want
to."

"But she should have been delighted to see you," Cynthe snapped back.
"Don't you think so? Certainly, she should have been overjoyed. She
should have flown to your arms! Not so? You remember what you said to
her the last time you saw her before that. No? I will tell you. You
called her 'liar' before the whole court, even the Judge! Of one
certainty, she should have flown to you. No?"

Now if Jeffrey had been wise he would have gone away, with all haste.
But he was not wise. He was sore. He felt ill-used. He was sure that
some of this was unjust. He foolishly stayed to argue.

"But she--she cared for me," he blurted out. "I know she did. I
couldn't understand why she couldn't tell--the truth; when you--you
did so much for me."

"For you? For _you_!" the girl flamed up in his face. "Oh, villainous
monster of vanity! For _you_! Ha! I could laugh! For _you_! I put _mon
Rafe_--dead in his grave--to shame before all the world, called him
murderer, blackened his name, for _you_!

"No! No! _No!_ _Never!_

"I would not have said a word against him to save you from the death.
_Never!_

"I did what I did, because there was a debt. A debt which _mon Rafe_
had forgotten to pay. He was waiting outside of Heaven for me to pay
that debt. I paid. I paid. His way was made straight. He could go in.
I did it for _you_! Ha!"

The theology of this was beyond Jeffrey. And the girl had talked so
rapidly and so fiercely that he could not gather even the context of
the matter. He gave up trying to follow it and went back to his main
argument.

"But why couldn'