have withdrawn the little hands, she threw herself on my knee, burying her face in the cushions.
"It is very wicked," she sobbed; "I cannot ask you to forgive me."
"Forgive what, my child? Eveena, you are certainly ill. Calm yourself, and don't try to talk just now."
"I am not ill, I assure you," she faltered, resisting the arm that sought to raise her; "but . . ."
In my hands, however, she was powerless as an infant; and I would hear nothing till I held her gathered within my arm and her two hands fast in my right. Now that I could look into the face she strove to avert, it was clear that she was neither hysterical nor simply ill; her agitation, however unreasonable and extravagant, was real.
"What troubles you, my own? I promise you not to say one word of reproach; I only want to understand with what you so bitterly reproach yourself."
"But you cannot help being angry," she urged, "if you understand what I have done. It is the charny, which I never tasted till that night, and never ought to have tasted again. I know you cannot forgive me; only take my fault for granted, and don't question me."
These incoherent words threw the first glimpse of light on the meaning of her distress and penitence. I doubt if the best woman in Christendom would so reproach and abase herself, if convicted of even a worse sin than the secret use of those stimulants for which the charny is a Martial equivalent. No Martialist would dream of poisoning his blood and besotting his brain with alcohol in any form. But their opiates
