"Oh, of course, my bambino, of course, a man 'of a kind,' or there would
be no peace disturbed. You want to tell me, I see. Proceed then; there
is no reason why you should not. I am secret. I have seen much. I have
no prejudices. As you will, however; but I can see it would relieve your
mind to tell me. In truth I felt there was something when I saw you look
at her first, when you spoke to her, when she talked with me. She is a
fine figure of a woman, and Jean Jacques, as you say, is much away from
home. In fact he neglects her--is it not so?"

"He means it not, but it is so. His life is full of--"

"Yes, yes, of stores and ash-factories and debtors and lightning-rods and
lime-kilns, and mortgaged farms, and the price of wheat--but certainly,
I understand it all, my Fille. She is too much alone, and if she has
travelled by the compass all these thirteen years without losing the
track, it is something to the credit of human nature."

"Ah, monsieur, a vow before the good God--!" The Judge interrupted
sharply. "Tut, tut--these vows! Do you not know that a vow may be a
thing that ruins past redemption? A vow is sacred. Well, a poor mortal
in one moment of weakness breaks it. Then there is a sense of awful
shame of being lost, of never being able to put right the breaking of the
vow, though the rest can be put right by sorrow and repentance! I would
have no vows. They haunt like ghosts when they are broken, they torture
like fire then. Don't talk to me of vows. It is not vows that keep the
world right, but the prayer of a man's soul from day to day."

The Judge's words sounded almost blasphemous to M. Fille. A vow not
keep the world right! Then why the vows of the Church at baptism,
at confirmation, at marriage? Why the vows of the priests, of the nuns,