that other I should not have known what sacrifice meant, all had been
delight. In this, monsieur, my instincts are stronger than reason,
stronger than religion or all else in me. Does the woman who is
neither wife nor mother sin in wishing to die when, for her
misfortune, she has caught a glimpse of the infinite beauty of love,
the limitless joy of motherhood? What can become of her? _I_ can tell
you what she feels. I cannot put that memory from me so resolutely but
that a hundred times, night and day, visions of a happiness, greater
it may be than the reality, rise before me, followed by a shudder
which shakes brain and heart and body. Before these cruel visions, my
feelings and thoughts grow colorless, and I ask myself, 'What would my
life have been _if_----?'"

She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.

"There you see the depths of my heart!" she continued. "For _his_
child I could have acquiesced in any lot however dreadful. He who
died, bearing the burden of the sins of the world will forgive this
thought of which I am dying; but the world, I know, is merciless. In
its ears my words are blasphemies; I am outraging all its codes. Oh!
that I could wage war against this world and break down and refashion
its laws and traditions! Has it not turned all my thoughts, and
feelings, and longings, and hopes, and every fibre in me into so many
sources of pain? Spoiled my future, present, and past? For me the
daylight is full of gloom, my thoughts pierce me like a sword, my
child is and is not.

"Oh, when Helene speaks to me, I wish that her voice were different,
when she looks into my face I wish that she had other eyes. She
constantly keeps me in mind of all that should have been and is not. I