Jeanne came from the room where she had been listening to her mother's story of self-blame and present abhorrence for the step she had so unwisely taken in yielding to one who should have been nothing to her.
"But you loved him then!" cried Jeanne, vehemently, thinking of the other woman whose joy and pride was centered in the Sieur Angelot.
"It was a sinful fancy, a temptation of the evil one. I should have struggled against it. I should have resigned myself to the life laid out for me. A man's love is a delusion. Oh, my child, there is nothing like the continual service of God to keep one from evil. The joys of the world are but as dust and ashes, nay, worse, they leave an ineradicable stain that not even prayer and penance can wash out. And this is why I have come to warn, to reclaim you, if possible. When I heard the story from a devoted young sister, whose name in the world was Berthê Campeau, I said I must go and snatch the soul of my child from the shadow of perdition that hangs over her."
Berthê Campeau! How strange it was that the other mother, nearing the end of life, should have plead with her child to stay a little longer in the world and wait until she was gone before she buried herself in convent walls!
Was it a happy life, even a life of resignation, that had left such lines in her mother's face? She was hardly in the prime of life, but she looked old already. Instead of being drawn to sympathize with her, Jeanne was repelled. Her mother did not want her for solace and human love and sympathy, but simply to keep her from evil. Was affection such a sin? She could love her father, yes, she could love M. St. Armand; and the Indian woman with her superstitions, her ignorance, was very, very dear. And she liked brightness, happy faces, the wide out-of-doors with its birds' songs, its waving trees, its fragrant breathing from shrub and flower that filled one with joy. Pani kissed her and clasped her to her heart, held her in her arms, smoothed the tangled curls, sometimes kissed them, too, caressed her soft, dainty hands as if they were another human being. This woman was her mother, but there was no passionate longing in her eyes, no tender possessing grasp in the hands that lay limp and colorless on her black gown. And Jeanne would have been still more horrified if she had known that those eyes looked upon her as part of a sinful life she had overcome by nights of vigil and days of solitude in work and prayer that she had once abhorred and fled from. Yet she pitied her profoundly. She longed to comfort her, but the nun did not want the comfort of human love.
"No, I cannot decide," Jeanne cried, and yet she knew in her soul she had decided.
She came out to her father with tears in her eyes, but the shelter of his arms was so strong and safe.
"Reverend fathers," the Sieur Angelot said, with a grave inclination of the head, "I thank you for your patience and courtesy. I can appreciate your feelings, too, but I think the law will uphold me in my claim to my daughter. And in my estimation Jeanne de Burre committed no sin in marrying me, and I would ever have been a faithful husband to her. But the decision of the Church seems most in consonance with her feelings. I have the honor of wishing you good day."