he weight of it most heavily, and he was willing and even
eager to offer this small and laggard reparation.

'We have lived here much more than the statutory time,' he said. 'I will
go and see the district registrar at once, and we will be married at the
earliest possible minute. That will only be a legal union, dear, but if
you care for anything further we can be married in a church when you get
strong enough.'

'Thank you, Paul,' she answered. 'You _are_ good to me.'

'Poor, sweet little woman!' he answered, for now he was touched deeply
by his own remorse. 'There, you are happy now?

'So happy, Paul! So happy!'

He kissed her and left her there, and loading up his pipe, set out at a
brisk pace across the common in the direction of the little township
in which the registrar was to be found. Half an hour's walk brought him
there, and the functionary was at home. Paul explained his errand and
its urgency. A special fee obviated publicity, and he paid it. Money
smoothes all kinds of roads, and in arrangements for marriage it will
almost abolish time.

Arrangements concluded, the coming bridegroom hastened home, his heart
warm with resolve and tender with a new-born affection. It was curious,
he thought, that he should so have misunderstood a woman with whom he
had been so long in the closest intercourse. That placid, yielding way
of hers, that habit of mind which he had regarded in his mannish
fashion as being altogether gelatinous and invertebrate--how ill he had
construed it all. What a depth of feeling lay concealed beneath it! 'Je
voudrais encontrer ma mere au ciel, comme fille honnete.' Ah! the poor
creature, who had yielded too easily to his embraces and his flatteries,
whom he had led astray with professions of love and admiration which
had never been real--what amends were too large to repay her? And the
promised amend seemed little enough, for he had not contemplated life
away from Annette. His association with her had isolated him in a
certain degree, but if good women were out of his life, and he missed
them sometimes rather sadly, good fellows were plentiful, married and
single, and the length of time for which his liaison had lasted had lent
it a kind of respectability. Possibly, after all, even if Annette
had not been about to release him, marriage would have been the best
solution of a difficulty. He wondered now why he had never thought of it
earlier. Simply because a trustful girl in her innocence