Her clamoring conscience caused her involuntarily to draw away from him to the end of the seat.  Her strange manner caused an uneasy feeling to sweep over him, yet accentuated the keen longing to win her.  Almost before he was aware of it, he was by her side again, and was telling her the story that is ever new, though so very old.  She would have given the world to have let her heart run riot, as the loving words came pouring from his lips.  She learned how she had first grown dear to him, as he had fought with the great reaper for her life, and how the sight of health returning to her dear face had been sweeter to him than he could ever tell her.  He told her, too, he was positive that he would never have been called to play the important part in her life which he had done, had it not been ordained from the beginning that his life was to be knit with hers.

    “To prevail in the cause that is dearer than life.”

The haunting words were still ringing in Adele’s ears, and made it ten-fold harder for her to tell him that he was not to prevail in the cause dearer than life, as it was to him.

As she sat, with face buried in her cold hands, and listened and tried to fight down the singing of her heart, she knew that nothing he could say could make her deny the Church and imperil the soul of her father once more.

    “Or be crushed in its ruins to die.”

“Marie, pity us! for that is the answer I have for him,” she whispered.  Ah! how she wished Doctor Prenoveau had been a true prophet, and that she had died.

As he ceased, she took the little silver crucifix which hung around her neck, pressed it tightly to her bosom, and turning her woe-begone face to him, said, as she rose, “You do not know, or you would not say such things to me.”

He had expected something so different.  “I—­I do not understand,” he said, wonderingly, rising and walking toward her.

She clutched the cross tighter and stepped back as he approached.  He was sorely perplexed and apprehensive, and she saw it, and her heart ached for him.

“I am going,” she began weakly, “to be a nun.  I have been in the convent before, and shall return in a few days.  In less than two months I shall take the veil.”

Dear heart!  Fight as she would for conscience’ sake, she could not keep out of her eyes the pity and love for him, as she saw the look of amazement and misery which flashed into his face, and noted how unsteadily his hand sought the back of the garden bench.

Suddenly their eyes met, and then he knew, and hope flew back, and with a glad ring in his voice he said, “You love me, Adele!” He started forward and imprisoned the hand with the crucifix in his own.  His apprehension had all vanished now, and boldly he told her that if she loved him she had no right to sacrifice their happiness.  Then his tone changed, and he pleaded with her; and as she looked into his eager eyes, listened, and saw how dear she was to him, her rejoicing heart deadened the lashings of her conscience; she forgot all about her promise to Father Sauvalle and to her parents; forgot all about the convent of the Sacred Heart; yea, even forgot the anathemas uttered by her father against the Church, in this, the first great happiness of her life.