Page:I will repay.djvu/138

Rh From the kitchen, at some little distance from the hall, Anne Mie's voice was heard singing an old ditty:

De ta tige détachée

Pauvre feuille désséchée

Où vas-tu?"

Juliette paused a moment. An awful ache had seized her heart; her eyes unconsciously filled with tears, as they roamed round the walls of this house which had sheltered her so hospitably, these three weeks past.

And now whither was she going? Like the poor, dead leaf of the song, she was a wastrel, torn from the parent bough, homeless, friendless, having turned against the one hand which, in this great time of peril, had been extended to her in kindness and in love.

Conscience was beginning to rise up against her, and that hydra-headed tyrant Remorse. She closed her eyes to shut out the hideous vision of her crime; she tried to forget this home which her treachery had desecrated.

Je vais où va toute chose

Où va la feuille de rose

Et la feuille de laurier,"

sang Anne Mie plaintively.

A great sob broke from Juliette's aching