“Can I have five minutes, Charles; is that too much?”
“Where are you going?”
“To say good-by to many things, to fetch your precious letters and the ivory chaplet used at my first communion. Oh! there are many sacred cherished souvenirs of my childhood which will remind me over there of my mother, of France. I will fetch them and return.”
“Amélie!”
“What is it?”
“I cannot leave you. If I part with you an instant now I feel that I shall lose you forever. Amélie, let me go with you.”
“Yes, come. What matter if they see your footsteps now? We shall be far enough away to-morrow. Come!” The young man sprang from the boat and gave his hand to Amélie to help her out. Then he folded his arm about her and they walked to the house.
On the portico Charles stopped.
“Go on alone,” said he; “memory is a chaste thing. I know that, and I will not embarrass you by my presence. I will wait here and watch for you. So long as I know you are close by me I do not fear to lose you. Go, dear, and come back quickly.”
Amélie answered with a kiss. Then she ran hastily up to her room, took the little coffer of carved oak clamped with iron, her treasury, which contained her lover’s letters from first to last, unfastened from the mirror above her bed the white and virginal chaplet that hung there; put into her belt a watch her father had given her, and passed into her mother’s bedchamber. There she stooped and kissed the pillow where her mother’s head had lain, knelt before the Christ at the foot of the bed, began a thanksgiving she dared not finish, changed it to a prayer, and then suddenly stopped—she fancied she heard Charles calling her.