“And I shall never see her again!” he murmured. “I shall remain here working and living from day to day, a blank, aimless existence until I die. I’ve heard it said that Fate puts her mark on those she intends to strike, and the truth of that I’ve never recognised until now. I remember what a strange apprehensive feeling came over me on the night we left London for Paris—a kind of foreboding that misfortune was upon me, a strange presage of evil. Again, that warning of Dolly’s was curious. I wonder what was contained in that newspaper report that she so particularly desired me to see? I’m sure Dolly loved me. If I had married her, perhaps, after all, I should have been happier. It was inflicting an absolute cruelty upon her when I cast her aside and married Valérie. Yet she bore it silently, without complaint, although I’m confident it almost broke her heart, poor girl!”
Sighing heavily, he passed his grimy, blistered hand wearily across his forehead.
“To think that I’m dead to them; that we shall never again meet! It seems impossible, although it’s the plain, undisguised truth. That canting old priest told me yesterday that God would extend His mercy to those of us who sought it. Bah! I don’t believe it. If the circumstances of our lives were controlled by the Almighty, He would never allow an innocent man like myself to suffer such punishment unjustly. No,” he declared in a wild outburst of despair, “the belief that God is Master of the world is an exploded fallacy. What proof have we of the existence of a Supreme Being? None. What proof of a life hereafter? None. Religion is a mere sentimental pastime for women and fools. For priests to try and convert convicts is a sorry, miserable farce. There is no God!”
Several minutes elapsed, during which he thought seriously upon the mad words that had escaped him. The recollection of the religious teaching he had received at his mother’s knee came back to him. He had often jested at holy things, but never before had he been smitten by conscience as now.
“Suppose—suppose, after all, there is an Almighty Power,” he said thoughtfully, in an awed voice. “Suppose it is enabled to direct circumstances and control destiny. In that case God could give me freedom. He could give Valérie back to me, and I should return home and resume the perfect happiness that was so brief and so suddenly dispelled. Ah! if such things could be! And—why not? My mother—did she not believe in God? Were not the words she uttered with her dying breath a declaration of implicit trust in Him? Did she not die peacefully because of her firm, unshaken faith?”
Jumping to his feet with a sudden resolution, he stretched forth his hands in supplication to heaven, exclaiming, in a hoarse, half-choked whisper—
“I—I believe—yes, I believe there’s a Ruling Power. No! I’ll not abandon all hope yet.”
His arms dropped listlessly to his side again, and he sank upon the boulder where he had been sitting, silent and thoughtful, wondering whether freedom would ever again be his.
“Hulloa,” exclaimed a voice in French. “Why, what’s the matter? Any one watching you from a distance, as I’ve been doing, would think you’d taken leave of your senses.”
Glancing up quickly, he saw it was a bearded, unkempt prisoner who, condemned to a sentence à perpétuité, worked in the mine in the same labour gang as himself.