curse me for it? Who knows what he would be brought back to--to what
suffering and pain, perhaps?' Marcel said that."

"And you replied, Monsieur le Cure?"

"I replied that Nature required you to answer that question for yourself,
and whether bitterly or gladly, it was your duty to take up your life and
live it out. Besides, it was not you alone that had to be considered.
One does not live alone or die alone in this world. There were your
friends to consider."

"And because I had no friends here, you were compelled to think for me!"
answered Charley calmly. "Truth is, it was not a question of my friends,
for what I was during those seven months, or what I am now, can make no
difference to them."

He looked the Cure in the eyes steadily, and as though he would convey
his intentions without words. The Curb understood. The habit of
listening to the revelations of the human heart had given him something
of that clairvoyance which can only be pursued by the primitive mind,
unvexed by complexity.

"It is, then, as though you had not come to life again? It is as though
you had no past, Monsieur?"

"It is that, Monsieur."

Jo suddenly turned and left the room, for he heard a step on the frosty
snow without.