l hours of doubt he had lately
lived through.

He spent the greater part of the day wandering about Paris, for he dared
not go home. This man of integrity and honor feared to meet the spotless
brow of the woman he had misjudged. We estimate wrongdoing in proportion
to the purity of our conscience; the deed which is scarcely a fault
in some hearts, takes the proportions of a crime in certain unsullied
souls. The slightest stain on the white garment of a virgin makes it a
thing ignoble as the rags of a mendicant. Between the two the difference
lies in the misfortune of the one, the wrong-doing of the other. God
never measures repentance; he never apportions it. As much is needed
to efface a spot as to obliterate the crimes of a lifetime. These
reflections fell with all their weight on Jules; passions, like human
laws, will not pardon, and their reasoning is more just; for are they
not based upon a conscience of their own as infallible as an instinct?

Jules finally came home pale, despondent, crushed beneath a sense of his
wrong-doing, and yet expressing in spite of himself the joy his wife's
innocence had given him. He entered her room all throbbing with emotion;
she was in bed with a high fever. He took her hand, kissed it, and
covered it with tears.

"Dear angel," he said, when they were alone, "it is repentance."

"And for what?" she answered.

As she made that reply, she laid her head back upon the pillow, closed
her eyes, and remained motionless, keeping the secret of her sufferings
that she might not frighten her husband,--the tenderness of a mother,
the delicacy of an angel! All the woman was in her answer.

The silence lasted long. Jules, thinking her asleep, went to question
Josephine as to her mistress's condition.

"Madame came home half-dead, monsieur. We sent at once for Monsieur
Haudry."

"Did he come? What did he say?"

"He said nothing, monsieur. He did not seem satisfied; gave orders that
no one should go near madame except the nurse, and said he should come
back this evening."

Jules returned softly to his wife's room and sat down in a chair before
the bed. There he remained, motionless, with his eyes fixed on those
of Clemence. When she raised her eyelids she saw him, and through those
lids passed a tender glance, full of passionate love, free from reproach
and bitterness,--a look which fell like a flame of fire upon the heart
of that husband, nobly absolved and forever loved by the being w