der Beach on Sunday
afternoons. Assuredly he will help you, if I am found unworthy."

But Marie would have none of this. She was a Christian, she maintained
as stoutly as her great fear of her husband would permit. She had been
baptized, and taught all that one should be taught. But it was all
different. Her Bible told that we must love people, but love
everybody, always, all times; and this black book said that we must
kill them with swords, and dash them against stones, and pray bad
things to happen to them. It stood to reason that it was not the same
Bible, _hein_? At this Jacques De Arthenay started, and took himself
by the hair with both hands, as he did when something moved him
strongly. "Those were bad people, Mary!" he cried. "Don't you see?
they withstood the Elect, and they were slain. And we must think about
these things, and think of our sins, and the sins of others as a
warning to ourselves. Sin is awful, black, horrible! and its wages is
death,--death, do you hear?"

When he cried out in this way, like a wild creature, Marie did not dare
to speak again; but she would murmur under her breath in French, as she
bent lower over her knitting, "Nevertheless, Mere Jeanne's good Lord
was good, and yours--"; and then she would quietly turn a hairpin
upside down in her hair, for it was quite certain that if she caught
Jacques's eye when he was in this mood, her hand would wither, or her
hair fall out, or at the very least the cream all sour in the pans; and
when one's hands were righteously busy, as with knitting, one might
make the horns with other things, and a hairpin was very useful. She
wished she had a little coral hand, such as she had once seen at a
fair, with the fingers making the horns in the proper manner; it would
be a great convenience, she thought with a sigh.

But he was always sorry after these dark times; and when he sat and
held her hand, as he did sometimes, silent for the most part, but
gazing at her with eyes of absolute, unspeakable love, Marie was
pleased, almost content: as nearly content as one could be with the
half of one's life taken away.

CHAPTER VII.

LOOKING BACK.

The half of a life! for so Marie counted the loss of her violin. She
never spoke of this--to whom should she speak? In her husband's eyes
it was a thing accursed, she knew. She almost hoped he had forgotten
about the precious treasure that lay so quietly in some dark nook in
the lonely garret;