The rector, assisted by one discreet choirboy, said the mortuary mass.

Then the body of the suicide was noiselessly carried to a corner of the cemetery, where a black wooden cross, without inscription, was all that indicated its place hereafter to the mother.

Athanase lived and died in shadow.

No voice was raised to blame the rector; the bishop kept silence.

The piety of the mother redeemed the impiety of the son's last act.
Some months later, the poor woman, half beside herself with grief, and moved by one of those inexplicable thirsts which misery feels to steep its lips in the bitter chalice, determined to see the spot where her son was drowned.