Of
course he isn't perfect. A man might want to save another's life, but he
might choose the wrong way to do it, and that's wrongheaded; and perhaps
he oughtn't to save the man's life, and that's wrong-purposed. There's no
crime in either. Let's go and hear Monsieur Barouche."
He did not see the flush which suddenly filled her face; and, if he had,
he would not have understood. For her a long twenty-seven years rolled
back to the day when she was a young neglected wife, full of life's
vitalities, out on a junction of the river and the wild woods, with
Barode Barouche's fishing-camp near by. She shivered now as she thought
of it. It was all so strange, and heart-breaking. For long years she had
paid the price of her mistake. She knew how eloquent Barode Barouche
could be; she knew how his voice had all the ravishment of silver bells
to the unsuspecting. How well she knew him; how deeply she realized the
darkness of his nature! Once she had said to him:
"Sometimes I think that for duty's sake you would cling like a leech."
It was true. For thirty long years he had been in one sense homeless, his
wife having lost her reason three years after they were married. In that
time he had faithfully visited the place of her confinement every month
of his life, sobered, chastened, at first hopeful, defiant.
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