Now if Jeffrey had been wise he would have gone away, with all haste. But he was not wise. He was sore. He felt ill-used. He was sure 315 that some of this was unjust. He foolishly stayed to argue.
“But she––she cared for me,” he blurted out. “I know she did. I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t tell––the truth; when you––you did so much for me.”
“For you? For you!” the girl flamed up in his face. “Oh, villainous monster of vanity! For you! Ha! I could laugh! For you! I put mon Rafe––dead in his grave––to shame before all the world, called him murderer, blackened his name, for you!
“No! No! No! Never!
“I would not have said a word against him to save you from the death. Never!
“I did what I did, because there was a debt. A debt which mon Rafe had forgotten to pay. He was waiting outside of Heaven for me to pay that debt. I paid. I paid. His way was made straight. He could go in. I did it for you! Ha!”
The theology of this was beyond Jeffrey. And the girl had talked so rapidly and so fiercely that he could not gather even the context of the matter. He gave up trying to follow it and went back to his main argument.
“But why couldn’t she have told the truth?”
“The truth, eh! You must have the truth! The girl must tell the truth for you! No matter if she was to blacken her soul before God, 316 you must have the truth told for you. The truth! It was not enough for you to know that the girl loved you, with her heart, with her life, that she would have died for you if she might! No. The poor girl must tear out the secret lining of her heart for you, to save you!
“Think you that if mon Rafe was alive and stood there where you stood, in peril of his life; think you that he would ask me to give up the secret of the Holy Confession to save him. Non! Mon Rafe was a man! He would die, telling me to keep that which God had trusted me with!