satisfaction. I do not understand women;
therefore I cannot tell."

"Monsieur," I answered, "leave it to God to fill His heaven as He
thinks best. He has not invited your assistance; neither has He
invited me to avenge Him. Since He does not punish, dare I invade His
prerogative?"

And we did not part.

We will live together in peace, we said, and the past shall be utterly
forgotten; shall not a whole lifetime of unwavering rectitude atone
for this one crime?

I accepted my fate,--weakly, in the dread of poverty, in the horror
of disgrace, shrinking within myself with the secret thrust upon me.
I said we are all the makers of our own destiny, and there is
nothing supernatural in life. If this course is best and wisest in my
judgment, nothing evil will come of it. I said this, ignorant of the
mystery of existence, and inexperienced in that subtile power which
penetrates all the windings and turnings of humanity, searching out
hidden things,--the Purifier, and the Avenger, allotting to each one
his portion of bitterness, his inexorable punishment. "We will live
together in peace": it was the thought of a sudden moment of fervor,
which overleaped the dreary length of life, and assumed to compass the
repentance of a whole existence in a single day.

But destiny holds always in store its retribution. God suffers no
dropped stitches in the web of His universe, and the smallest truth
evaded, the least wretch neglected, will surely be picked up again
in the unending circle that is winding its certain thread around all
beings, connecting by invisible links the most insignificant chances
with the most significant events.

When I said we will be one, we will endure together, I thought that
so, in my enduring strength, I could bear up whatever burden came. I
know not how, by what invisible process, the load which I had lifted
to my shoulders grew into leaden heaviness,--heavy, heavy, like the
weight of some dead soul resting its lifeless shape upon my living
spirit, till I staggered under the unbearable presence. I had doomed
myself to stand side by side, to work hand in hand with guilt, to feel
hourly the dread lest in some moment of frenzy engendered by the dumb
anguish within me I might betray the secret whose rust was eating into
my soul, and shriek out my misery in the ears of all men.

Monsieur, seeing me grow thin and pale, declared that I must have a
change, I must go somewhere, to the sea-shore. To the sea-shore!