The Connecticut labor press., 1920-03-06

? #! dying mother lay, and the sick woman,
 gripping her hand fast in her burning
 ones, was repeating a name over and
 over. Say it again, child!" she was
 whispering.
 She reiterated this demand over and
 over again.
 Say it! !" she muttered. "Say 1t, and
 never forget. And carry 1t with thee
 through life, saying 1t in moments of
 temptation, that thou mayest remem-
 Der thy mother and understand. Now
 swear by the Virgin to say 1t morning
 and night, and never forget!"
 The frightened girl had sworn,
 catching the words from her mothers s
 lips. She had said the name morn and
 night until it had become engraved
 upon her memory forever. But 1t was long before she understood its mean
 ing.
 1 Then she remembered her father shaking her by the arms. "The name
 thy mother told thee-speak it. Ma
 rie!''
 "No," answered the little girl ob- stinately.
 1 He threatened her, but the child of five years pressed her lips together and would not utter a word. Listen, MarieI If you tell me thou | shalt have everything in the world. A new dress, and thou shalt sail with me
 upon my ship, and will buy thee the | big doll that opens and shuts her eyes. The name, Marie !' F Marie remained perfectly silent. And for years she resisted her fathers | threats and promises and pleadings, not understanding that 1t was mental | inhibition which she could not break. | The sight of her dying mother had | inflicted a wound in the child's soul l that never healed. And every week at first, every month later. the scene with her father was renewed.
 She never pretended to have forgot | ten, as she might well have done. As she grew older her fathers outbursts became less frequent. But the insane | rage which agitated him grew rather | than ressened as the years went by. | Sixteen had passed; she was now l twenty-one, and she looked back on a childhood that had been a torture. Her arrangement from her father was as complete as from the village life. At first the scandal had been | against her, and later her aloofness had set the tongues of the St. Boniface 1 women to wagging. Like mother, like daughter'-so runs the hard proverb in every country. Marie Dupont grew l up friendless and utterly alone. The girl had never had friend, nor had she ever even had sweetheart until six months before.
 Pierre, in the course of his peregri- nations along the coast, at that time as assistant on smuggling craft, had come to know the solitary figure that 1 paced the beach. In those days the girls heart, cut off from natural com munication with the young people of St. Boniface, had turned, with the vague yearning of youth, to dreams of the world outside. The repressed spirit seeks its adventures in devious ways; if not in action, then in imagina- ton. Marie Dupont longed for release from her imprisonment, and dreamed of the prince who was some day to come and take her away. @
 When Baptiste began to show an in- terest in her she hated him. She had never thought of him as a lover, and hardly as man; he was part of St. Boniface, of the hateful life that en- compassed her, clutched at her and would not let her go free. She came all that she loathed.
 Pierre scraped acquaintance with her. He had the intuition of the base man who must perforce win his vic tims by guile. He listened to her con- fidences, shyly given to one who, by his wandering life and through the tales that he told, seemed the exact opposite of all those whom she had known. He sent Nanette to see Marie, choosing the time when Dupont was away.
 Nanette was not bad; like most of her kind she was below normal men, tality. When her lover, who had brought her to Ste. Marie, abandoned her, she worked in large and cheap lumbermen's summer boardinghouse. Pierre promised her that the man would return to her if she obeyed him. She met Marie upon the beach, and insinuated herself into her confidence. At last she took her to Simeon's dance hall.
 The lights, the dancing and the music were a revelation to her. On the first night she cried from happi- ness. Wholly ignorant of life, her in- nocence protected her and sealed her consciousness. And Simeon's place was better in the early summer of that year than afterward, and some of the lumbernen would bring their sweethearts there.
 The girls innocence found an ally in the lumbermen, who protected her, and she was, in fact, as safe there as in her home. Pierre was angry at first, but afterward he was glad, for he saw her dancing in Simeon's place and began to conceive an infatuation for her. He renewed his advances, telling her of Quebec, of the free life of the world beyond. When her imag- ination was enkindled and her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled at the picture. he asked her to accompany Nanette with him on board his vessel, come to Quebec, and marry him.
 That was three days before. and 1t was of this that the girl was think