his shall cease," said he, "if I can only make myself heard.
To-day--to-night--just before you came in, I was trying to put the thing
on paper--trying to put down what I have seen with my own eyes, and heard
with my own ears, but the ink seems ice. What I write seems nothing,
nothing beside what I have seen. The mere statement that so many were
killed, so many were tortured, conveys nothing of the reality. The thing
is too big for me. God made it, I suppose; but I wish to God I had never
seen it."

Maxine was standing now with her hands resting on the back of an armchair.
She seemed scarcely listening to what her companion was saying. She was
listening, but she was thinking as well.

"You cannot do everything yourself," said she, at last. "You must get
others to help, and in this I can, perhaps, assist you. Will you go
to-morrow and see Monsieur Pugin? I do not know him personally, but I know
a friend of his. I will send him a note early to-morrow morning, and the
servant can bring back the letter of introduction. You could call upon him
to-morrow afternoon."

"Who is Monsieur Pugin?"

This question, showing such a boundless ignorance of every-day French life
and literature, rather shocked Maxine. She explained that Ary Pugin, the
author of "Absolution" and twenty other works equally beautiful, was above
all other men fitted to bring home to France the story of this great sin.
"Absolution," that masterpiece, had shown France her cruelty in the
expulsion of the religious orders. France had read it weeping, drying her
tears with one hand and continuing the expulsion of the religious orders
with the other.

That, however, was not Pugin's fault; he had done his best. It was not his
fault that logic and sentiment are so largely constituent of the French
nature, making between them that paradox, the French mind.

"I will go and see him," said Adams, when the girl had explained what
Pugin was, what Pugin did, and what Pugin had written. "A man like that
could do more with a stroke of his pen, than I with weary years of
blundering attempts to write. I can never thank you enough for listening
to me. It is strange, but half the weight of the thing seems to have
passed from my mind."

"To mine," she replied. Then, with charming _naivete_, she held out both
hands to him.

"Good night."

As he held the door open, and as she passed out, he realized that, during
the last few months, his faith in the goodness of God--the old