rie was her daughter, a girl of twenty, weak
and thin and consumptive; but still she did heavy work at the houses
around, day by day. Well, one fine day a commercial traveller betrayed
her and carried her off; and a week later he deserted her. She came home
dirty, draggled, and shoeless; she had walked for a whole week without
shoes; she had slept in the fields, and caught a terrible cold; her feet
were swollen and sore, and her hands torn and scratched all over. She
never had been pretty even before; but her eyes were quiet, innocent,
kind eyes.

"She was very quiet always--and I remember once, when she had suddenly
begun singing at her work, everyone said, 'Marie tried to sing today!'
and she got so chaffed that she was silent for ever after. She had been
treated kindly in the place before; but when she came back now--ill and
shunned and miserable--not one of them all had the slightest sympathy
for her. Cruel people! Oh, what hazy understandings they have on such
matters! Her mother was the first to show the way. She received her
wrathfully, unkindly, and with contempt. 'You have disgraced me,' she
said. She was the first to cast her into ignominy; but when they all
heard that Marie had returned to the village, they ran out to see
her and crowded into the little cottage--old men, children, women,
girls--such a hurrying, stamping, greedy crowd. Marie was lying on
the floor at the old woman's feet, hungry, torn, draggled, crying,
miserable.

"When everyone crowded into the room she hid her face in her dishevelled
hair and lay cowering on the floor. Everyone looked at her as though she
were a piece of dirt off the road. The old men scolded and condemned,
and the young ones laughed at her. The women condemned her too, and
looked at her contemptuously, just as though she were some loathsome
insect.

"Her mother allowed all this to go on, and nodded her head and
encouraged them. The old woman was very ill at that time, and knew she
was dying (she really did die a couple of months later), and though she
felt the end approaching she never thought of forgiving her daughter, to
the very day of her death. She would not even speak to her. She made
her sleep on straw in a shed, and hardly gave her food enough to support
life.

"Marie was very gentle to her mother, and nursed her, and did everything
for her; but the old woman accepted all her services without a word
and never showed her the slightest kindness. Marie bore all t