'My dear Marie,' began the Cure, 'your aunt has been telling me of this little difference between you and your affianced husband. Won't you sit down, Marie, because we shall be able so to talk more comfortably?' 'I don't want to talk about it at all,' said Marie. But she sat down as she was bidden. 'But, my dear, it is needful that your friends should talk to you. I am sure that you have too much sense to think that a young woman like yourself should refuse to hear her friends.' Marie had it almost on her tongue to tell the priest that the only friends to whom she chose to listen were her uncle and her aunt, but she thought that it might perhaps be better that she should remain silent. 'Of course, my dear, a young person like you must know that she must walk by advice, and I am sure you must feel that no one can give it you more fittingly than your own priest.' Then he took a large pinch of snuff. 'If it were anything to do with the Church,--yes,' she said. 'And this has to do with the Church, very much. Indeed I do not know how any of our duties in this life cannot have to do with the Church. There can be no duty omitted as to which you would not acknowledge that it was necessary that you should get absolution from your priest.' 'But that would be in the church,' said Marie, not quite knowing how to make good her point. 'Whether you are in the church or out of it, is just the same. If you were sick and in bed, would your priest be nothing to you then?' 'But I am quite well, Father Gondin.' 'Well in health; but sick in spirit,--as I am sure you must own. And I must explain to you, my dear, that this is a matter in which your religious duty is specially in question. You have been betrothed, you know, to M. Urmand.' 'But people betrothed are very often not married,' said Marie quickly. 'There was Annette Lolme at Saint Die. She was betrothed to Jean Stein at Pugnac. That was only last winter. And then there was something wrong about the money; and the betrothal went for nothing, and Father Carrier himself said it was all right. If it was all right for Annette Lolme, it must be all right for me as far as betrothing goes.'