"I have come to bid my old playmate and friend good-by," and there was a sweet pathos in his voice that woke a sort of tenderness in the girl's heart, for it brought back a touch of the old pleasant days before he had really grown to manhood, when they sat under her oak and listened to Pani's legendary stories.
"I wish you bon voyage, Monsieur."
"Say Louis just once. It will be a bit of music to which I shall sail up the river."
"Monsieur Louis."
The tone was clear and no warmth penetrated it. He could see her face distinctly in the moonlight and it was passive in its beauty.
"Thou hast not forgiven me. If I knelt—"
"Nay!" she sprang up and stood at Pani's back. "There is nothing to kneel for. When you are away I shall strive to forget your insistence—"
"And remember that it sprang from love," he interrupted. "Jeanne, is your heart of marble that nothing moves it? There are curious stories of women who have little human warmth in them—who are born of strange parents."
"Monsieur, that is wrong. Jeanne hath ever been loving and fond from the time she put her little arms around my neck. She is kindly and tender—the poor tailor's lonely woman will tell you. And she spent hours with poor Madame Campeau when her own daughter left her and went away to a convent, comforting her and reading prayers. No, she is not cold hearted."
"Then you have taken all her love," complainingly.