She seated herself near him, resting one large, fair arm on the table beside her. With the closing of the door upon her guests she had thrown aside the social mask, and a passionate sadness had settled upon her face. "I wanted to go to the sacristy on Friday," she went on, "but I could not. And I am so unhappy." Brought face to face, as he often was, with the grinning skeleton that lies beneath the fleshly veil of many a woman's life, Father Algarcife had developed an almost intuitive conception of degrees in suffering. Above all, he had learned, as only a priest and a physician can learn, the measures of sorrow that Fate may dole out to the victim who writhes behind a smile. The sympathetic quality in his voice deepened. "Have you gained no strength," he asked, "no indifference?" "I cannot! I have tried, tried, tried so long, but just when I think I have steeled myself something touches the old spring, and it all comes back. On Thursday I saw a woman who was happy. It has tortured me ever since." "Perhaps she thought you happy." "No; she knew and she pitied me. We had been at school together. I was romantic then, and she laughed at me. The tears came into her eyes when she recalled it. She is not a wealthy woman. The man she married works very hard, but I envy her." "Of what use?" She leaned nearer, resting her chin upon her clasped hands. The diamonds on her fingers blazed in the lamplight. "You don't know what it means to me," she said. "I am not a clever woman. I was made to be a happy one. I believe myself a good one, and yet there are days when I feel myself to be no better than a lost woman--when I would do anything--for love." "You fight such thoughts?" "I try to, but they haunt me." "And there is no happiness for you in your marriage? None that you can wring from disappointment?" "It is too late. He loved me in the beginning, as he has loved a dozen women since--as he loves a woman of the town--for an hour." A shiver of disgust crossed her face. "I know." He was familiar with the story. He had heard it from her lips before. He had seen the whole tragic outcome of man's and woman's ignorance--the ignorance of passion and the ignorance of innocence. He had seen it pityingly, condemning neither the one nor the other, neither the man surfeited with lust nor the woman famished for love. "I cannot help you," he said. "I can only say what I have said before, and said badly. There is no happiness in the things you cry for. So long as self is self, gratification will fail it. When it has waded through one mirage it looks for another. Take your life as you find it, face it like a woman, make the best of what remains of it. The world is full of opportunities for usefulness--and you have your faith and your child." She started. "Yes," she said. "The child is everything." Then she rose. "I want to show him to you," she said, "while he sleeps."