The baron was away, her mother was dead, and she had no one to whom she could confide this delicate secret. She made up her mind, at last, to tell the Abbe Picot her difficulty, under the seal of confession. She went to him one day and found him in his little garden, reading his breviary among the fruit trees. She talked to him for a few minutes about one thing and another, then, "Monsieur l'abbe, I want to confess," she said, with a deep blush. He put on his spectacles to look at her better, for the request astonished him. "I don't think you can have any very heavy sins on your conscience," he said, with a smile. "No, but I want to ask your advice on a subject so--so painful to enter upon, that I dare not talk about it in an ordinary way," she replied, feeling very confused. He put on his priestly air immediately. "Very well, my daughter, come to the confessional, and I will hear you there." But she suddenly felt a scruple at talking of such things in the quietness of an empty church. "No, Monsieur le cure--after all--if you will let me--I can tell you here what I want to say. See, we will go and sit in your little arbor over there." As they walked slowly over to the arbor she tried to find the words in which she could best begin her confidence. They sat down, and she commenced, as if she were confessing, "My father," then hesitated, said again, "My father," then stopped altogether, too ashamed to continue. The priest crossed his hands over his stomach and waited for her to go on. "Well, my daughter," he said, perceiving her embarrassment, "you seem afraid to say what it is; come now, be brave." "My father, I want to have another child," she said abruptly, like a coward throwing himself headlong into the danger he dreads. The priest, hardly understanding what she meant, made no answer, and she tried to explain herself, but, in her confusion, her words became more and more difficult to understand. "I am quite alone in life now; my father and my husband do not agree; my mother is dead, and--and--the other day I almost lost my son," she whispered with a shudder. "What would have become of me if he had died?" The priest looked at her in bewilderment. "There, there; come to the point," he said. "I want to have another child," she repeated. The abbe was used to the coarse pleasantries of the peasants, who did not mind what they said before him, and he answered, with a sly smile and a knowing shake of the head: "Well, I don't think there need be much difficulty about that." She raised her clear eyes to his and said, hesitatingly: "But--but--don't you understand that since--since that trouble with--the--maid--my husband and I live--quite apart." These words came as a revelation to the priest, accustomed as he was to the promiscuity and easy morals of the peasants. Then he thought he could guess what the young wife really wanted, and he looked at her out of the corner of his eye, pitying her, and sympathizing with her distress.