honor of it I had
bought a little cross of gold which I had arranged in a box with cotton.
We were alone in the back shop, and she had just brought me my soup. I
took my box from my pocket, and, opening it, I showed her the jewel.
Then she burst into tears.

[Illustration]

"'Forgive me, Jack,' she said, 'and keep that for her whom you will
marry. As for me, I can never become your wife. I love another--I love
Philip.'

IV.

"Believe me, I had trouble enough then, monsieur le cure; my soul was
full of it. But what could I do, since I loved them both? Only what I
believed was for their happiness--let them marry. And as Philip had
always lived freely, and spent as he made, I lent him my hoard to buy
the furniture.

"Then they were married, and for a while all went well. They had a
little boy, and I stood sponsor for him and named him Camille, in
remembrance of his mother. It was a little after the birth of the baby
that Philip began to go wrong. I was mistaken in him--he was not made
for marriage; he was too fond of frivolity and pleasure. You live in a
poor quarter, monsieur le cure, and you must know the sad story by
heart--the workman who glides little by little from idleness into
drunkenness, who is off on a spree for two or three days, who does not
bring home his week's wages, and who only returns to his home, broken up
by his spree, to make scenes and to beat his wife. In less than two
years Philip became one of these wretches. At first I tried to reform
him, and sometimes, ashamed of himself, he would attempt to do better;
but that did not last long. Then my remonstrances only irritated him;
and when I went to his house, and he saw me look sadly around the
chamber made bare by the pawn-shop, at poor Catherine, thin and pale
with grief, he became furious. One day he had the audacity to be jealous
of me on account of his wife, who was as pure as the blessed Virgin,
reminding me that I was once her lover and accusing me of still being
so, with slanders and infamies that I should be ashamed to repeat. We
almost flew at each other's throats. I saw what I must do. I would see
Catherine and my godson no more; and as for Philip, I would only meet
him when by chance we worked on the same job.

"Only, you will understand, I loved Catherine and little Camille too
well to lose sight of them entirely. On Saturday evenings, when I knew
that Philip was drinking up his wages with his comrades, I used to prowl
about the