s but one expiation for
me--to do what you are to do; plead guilty and take my punishment like a
man. I failed to do it--and _I_ preach of manhood to you!"

There was silence in the room. Champney broke it and his voice was
almost unrecognizable; it was hoarse, constrained:

"But your love was noble--you loved her with all the manhood that was in
you."

"God knows I did; but that does not alter the fact of my consequent
crime."

He looked again at Champney as he spoke out his conviction, and his own
emotion suffered a check in his amazement at the change in the
countenance before him. He had seen nothing like this in the thirty-two
hours he had been in his presence; his jaw was set; his nostrils white
and sharpened; the pupils of his eyes contracted to pin points; and into
the sallow cheeks, up to the forehead knotted as with intense pain, into
the sunken temples, the blood rushed with a force that threatened
physical disaster, only to recede as quickly, leaving the face ghastly
white, the eyelids twitching, the muscles about the mouth quivering.

Noting all this Father Honore read deeper still; he knew that Champney
Googe had not told him the whole, possibly not the half--_and never
would tell_. His next question convinced him of that.

"May I ask what became of the young girl you loved?--Don't answer, if I
am asking too much."

"I don't know. I have never heard from her. I can only surmise. But I
did receive a letter from her when I was in prison, before my trial--she
was summoned as witness; and oh, the infinite mercy of a loving woman's
heart!" He was silent a moment.

"She took so much blame upon herself, telling me that she had not known
her own heart; that she tried to think she loved me as a brother; that
she had been willing to let it go on so, and because she had not been
brave enough to be honest with herself, all this trouble had come upon
me whom she acknowledged she loved--upon her and her household. She
begged me, if acquitted, never to see her, never to communicate with her
again. There was but one duty for us both she said, guilty as we both
were of what had occurred to wreck a human being for life; to go each
_the way apart_ forever--I mine, she hers--to expiate in good works, in
loving kindness to those who might need our help....

"I have never known anything further--heard no word--made no inquiry. At
that time, after my acquittal, my great-uncle, a well-to-do baker,
settled a sum of mone