was all over.

As soon as the benediction was pronounced, the nuns arose to leave their
screened choir, and the congregation got up to go out from the chapel.

Salome lingered behind the sisterhood, and watched the handsome stranger
in the third pew front--a stranger to every one present except herself.

He also lingered behind all his companions, and turned and looked
intently up into the screened choir.

Salome saw his full face for the first time since his appearance
there--and she saw that it was deadly, ghastly pale, with white lips and
glassy eyes. He gazed into the screened choir as into vacancy.

Salome knew that he could see nothing there, yet she shrank back and
stood in the deepest shadow, until she saw him pick up his hat and glide
from the chapel, the last man that went out.

"Ah, what could have changed him so?" she thought--"love, fear,
remorse--what?"

He had nothing to fear from her. If no one should take vengeance on him
until she should do so, then would he go unpunished to his grave, and his
sin would never have found him out in this world. Nay, sooner than to
have hurt him in life, liberty, honor, or estate, she, herself, would
have borne the penalty of all his crimes. Yet of those crimes what an
unspeakable horror she had, though for the criminal what an unutterable
pity--what an undying love.

While she stood there, gazing through the choir-screen upon the spot
whence the stranger had disappeared, her bosom, torn by these conflicting
passions of horror, pity, love, she felt a soft touch on her shoulder,
and turning, saw the mother-superior at her side.

"My daughter, why do you loiter here?" she tenderly inquired.

Salome's pale face flushed, as she replied:

"Oh, mother, I was watching him until he left the church."

"My daughter, it was a deadly sin to do so!" gravely replied the abbess.

"He could not see me, mother," sighed Salome, in a tremulous voice.

"That was well. Come now to your own room, daughter, and do not tremble
so. You have nothing to fear, except from your own weak and sinful
nature," said the abbess, as she drew the girl's arm within her own
and led her from the choir.

"Am I so weak and sinful, mother?" inquired Salome, after a silence which
had lasted until the two had reached the door of the Infants' Asylum,
where Salome now lodged.

"As every human being is! and especially as every woman is in all affairs
of the heart," gravely returned the abbess.

"Ca