aid hoarsely, "you must go back. You do not
understand. Jean is very different now--he is not the Jean--"

"I know," she interposed, with a catch in her voice. "I know--better
than you think I know. It is you who do not understand. He is of the
_grand monde_, I understand that; and I--I am what I am, and it must be
always so. But I love him, father. Is it wrong that I should love
him? I will never speak to him, and he shall never know that I am
here; but I must see him, and see his work, and--and--oh, don't you
understand?"

"And after that?" asked the old priest sorrowfully.

"What does it matter--after that?" she said tensely. "I do not know."

"No, Marie-Louise," he said earnestly, "no, my child, no good can come
of it. You must go back to Bernay-sur-Mer."

She drew away from him, staring at him a little wildly.

"But do you not understand?" she cried out with a sudden rush of
passion. "But do you not understand that it is stronger than I--that I
could not stay in Bernay-sur-Mer because I was always thinking,
thinking--that I could not go back there now any more than I could stay
there before? I must do this! I will do it! Nothing shall stop me!
And if you will not help me, then--"

Father Anton drew her gently back against his knees. Yes; he was
beginning to understand--that the problem was not to be settled so
easily as by the mere expedient of telling Marie-Louise she must go
back to Bernay-sur-Mer. Those small clenched hands, those tight lips
were eloquent of finality. It became simply a matter of accepting a
fact. He might insist a dozen times that she should go. It would be
useless. She would not go! The old priest's brows furrowed in
anxiety. This love for Jean was still first in the girl's heart.
Words, arguments, were of no avail against the longing that was supreme
with her, that had brought her on the long journey across all France.
But her love was the love that pictured the frank, strong, simple
fisherman of Bernay-sur-Mer. If she should see Jean as he really was!
If she should see for herself the change in him, the abandon of his
life; and, too, see the glittering circles in which he moved! The
first would dispel her love for him; the second would show her in any
case the utter futility of it. As long as she held this love, that he
had hoped and prayed she had forgotten, it spoiled her life. It could
only bring her misery, unhappiness and sorrow. It would hurt cruelly,