only one more celebration? I
thought that as you always go to church--I thought you would communicate
this morning."

Bert stepped backward with a sort of action she had never seen in him
before. It seemed to alter his whole body.

"You may be right or wrong to risk dying," said the girl, simply; "the
poor women in our village risk it whenever they have a baby. You men are
the other half of the world. I know nothing about when you ought to die.
But surely if you are daring to try and find God beyond the grave and
appeal to Him--you ought to let Him find you when He comes and stands
there every morning in our little church."

And placid as she was, she made a little gesture of argument, of which
the pathos wrung the heart.

M. Camille Bert was by no means placid. Before that incomplete gesture
and frankly pleading face he retreated as if from the jaws of a dragon.
His dark black hair and beard looked utterly unnatural against the
startling pallor of his face. When at last he said something it was:
"O God! I can't stand this!" He did not say it in French. Nor did he,
strictly speaking, say it in English. The truth (interesting only to
anthropologists) is that he said it in Scotch.

"There will be another mass in a matter of eight hours," said Madeleine,
with a sort of business eagerness and energy, "and you can do it then
before the fighting. You must forgive me, but I was so frightened that
you would not do it at all."

Bert seemed to crush his teeth together until they broke, and managed to
say between them: "And why should you suppose that I shouldn't do as you
say--I mean not to do it at all?"

"You always go to Mass," answered the girl, opening her wide blue eyes,
"and the Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God."

Then it was that Bert exploded with a brutality which might have come
from Count Gregory, his criminal opponent. He advanced upon Madeleine
with flaming eyes, and almost took her by the two shoulders. "I do not
love God," he cried, speaking French with the broadest Scotch accent; "I
do not want to find Him; I do not think He is there to be found. I must
burst up the show; I must and will say everything. You are the happiest
and honestest thing I ever saw in this godless universe. And I am the
dirtiest and most dishonest."

Madeleine looked at him doubtfully for an instant, and then said with a
sudden simplicity and cheerfulness: "Oh, but if you are really sorry it
is all right. If yo