"Pardi!" he ejaculated. "And thou?"
"So much," she palpitated, "so much that when you looked at the princess like that—I wished you were blind!"
At the bottom of the hill, the old folks, Burgundians to the souls of them, happily bade the young couple to be off about their own affairs. They knew how it was with young married people. The old were obstacles—so they themselves well recalled—albeit that was more than twenty years ago.
Said Gaspard fondly: "This business has put me back in my work; but we'll call this a holiday. Shall we go to my cottage or into the forest? I know of a secret place—"
"Into the forest," whispered Susette. "I don't like the forge. It makes me think—think of that cursed princess—and of the work that almost lost you to me." Her blue eyes filmed as she looked up at him. "Oh, Gaspard, I also have dreamed so much—of love—a life of love with thee!"
There was no one there to see. Some day, perhaps, in the far distant future, this part of the world would be thickly populated. But this was not yet the case. Gaspard brought his bride close to his breast, smiled gravely into her upturned face. He kissed her tears away. Sweet Susette! She was such a child! How little she knew of life!
And yet what was that fragile, fluttering, elusive, tiny suggestion of a regret in the back of his brain? Now he saw it; now it was gone—a silver moth of a thought, yet one, some instinct warned him, was there to gnaw a hole in his happiness.
He said nothing about this to Susette, of course; he chased it from his own joy. And this joy was a beautiful, tumultuous thing.
"It's like the source of the Rhone, which I saw one time—this joy of ours," he said with placid rapture. "All sparkling it was, and wild cataracts, and deep places, clean and full of mystery."
"Ah, I want it to be always like this," said Susette.