She is too much alone, and if she has
travelled by the compass all these thirteen years without losing the
track, it is something to the credit of human nature."
"Ah, monsieur, a vow before the good God--!" The Judge interrupted
sharply. "Tut, tut--these vows! Do you not know that a vow may be a thing
that ruins past redemption? A vow is sacred. Well, a poor mortal in one
moment of weakness breaks it. Then there is a sense of awful shame of
being lost, of never being able to put right the breaking of the vow,
though the rest can be put right by sorrow and repentance! I would have
no vows. They haunt like ghosts when they are broken, they torture like
fire then. Don't talk to me of vows. It is not vows that keep the world
right, but the prayer of a man's soul from day to day."
The Judge's words sounded almost blasphemous to M. Fille. A vow not keep
the world right! Then why the vows of the Church at baptism, at
confirmation, at marriage? Why the vows of the priests, of the nuns, of
those who had given themselves to eternal service? Monsieur had spoken
terrible things. And yet he had said at the last: "It is not vows that
keep the world right, but the prayer of a man's soul from day to day."
That was not heretical, or atheistic, or blasphemous. It sounded logical
and true and good.
He was about to say that, to some people, vows were the only way of
keeping them to their duty--and especially women--but the Judge added
gently: "I would not for the world hurt your sensibilities, my little
Clerk, and we are not nearly so far apart as you think at the minute.
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