unworthy of the name if they cannot silence reason. I affected only to
look at the bruises, but it was an empty farce. I blush for myself; here
was I conquered by a simple girl, ignorant of well nigh everything. But
she knew well enough that I was inhaling the poison at every pore. All at
once she dropped her clothes and came and sat beside me, feeling sure
that I should have relished a continuance of the spectacle.

However, I made an effort and said, coldly, that it was all her own
fault.

"I know it is," said she, "for if I had been tractable as I ought to have
been, you would have been loving instead of cruel. But repentance effaces
sin, and I am come to beg pardon. May I hope to obtain it?"

"Certainly; I am angry with you no longer, but I cannot forgive myself.
Now go, and trouble me no more."

"I will if you like, but there is something you have not heard, and I beg
you will listen to me a moment."

"As I have nothing to do you can say what you have got to say, I will
listen to you."

In spite of the coldness of my words, I was really profoundly touched,
and the worst of it was that I began to believe in the genuineness of her
motives.

She might have relieved herself of what she had to say in a quarter of an
hour, but by dint of tears, sighs, groans, digressions, and so forth, she
took two hours to tell me that her mother had made her swear to pass the