Child of misfortune that she was, victim of a series of untoward and fatal circumstances, she had reason all her life to regret her credulity; but never to reproach herself for wrong intentions.  Her heart often betrayed her; but her soul was never corrupted.  She ought to have been more careful—­alas, yes, she ought—­but she meant no sin.

Now that the confidence of Pepeeta had been secured, David’s part in this drama became comparatively easy.

He listened to the brief conversation in which by a well-constructed chain of fictitious reasonings the judge riveted upon the too eager mind of the child-wife the conclusion that she was free.  When this arch villain had concluded his arguments every suspicion had vanished from her soul, and as he rose to depart she took him by the hand and bade him a kindly and almost affectionate farewell.  “Do not afflict yourself with this painful memory,” she said gently.

“I shall not need to afflict myself,” he replied; “my memory will afflict me, for I am as guilty as if the result had been what I expected; and if in the coming years you find a moment now and then in which you can lift up a prayer for a man who has forfeited his claim to mercy, I beg you to devote it to him who from the depths of his heart wishes you joy.  Good-bye.”

With many assurances of her pardon, Pepeeta followed him to the door and bade him farewell.

When she returned to David her face was luminous with happiness, and although he had begun already to experience a reaction and to suffer remorse for his successful infamy, it was only like a drop of poison in the ocean of his joy.

“Did I not tell you that all would be well?” she cried, approaching him and extending both her hands.  “But how sudden and how strange it is.  It is too good to be true.  I cannot realize that I am free.  I am like a little bird that hops about its cage, peeps through the door which its mistress’ hand has opened, and knows not what to think.  It wishes to go; but it is frightened.  What shall it do, David?  Tell it!  Shall it fly?”

“I also am too bewildered to act and almost too bewildered to think,” he said with unaffected excitement and anxiety, for now that the time and opportunity for him to take so momentous a step had come, his heart failed him.  It was only with the most violent effort and under a most pressing necessity that he pulled himself together and continued,

“The little bird must fly, and its mate must fly with it.  There are too few hours before daylight and we must not lose a single one.  But are you sure that you are quite ready?  Is your mind made up?  Will you go with me trustfully?  Will you accept whatever the future has in store?”

She took him in her strong young arms, printed her first kiss upon his lips, and said:  “I will go with you to the ends of the earth!  I will go with you through water and through fire!  The future cannot bring me anything from which I shall shrink, if it lets us meet it hand in hand!”