The next morning M. St. Armand came for a long call. There was so much to talk over. He felt sorry for the poor mother, but he, too, objected strenuously to Jeanne being persuaded into convent life. He praised her for her perseverance in studying, for her improvement under limited conditions. Then he wondered a little about her future. If he could have the ordering of it!
That afternoon Father Rameau came for her. A ship was to sail the next day for Montreal, and her mother would return in it. But when he looked in the child's eyes he knew the mother would go alone. Had he been derelict in duty and let this lamb wander from the fold? Father Gilbert blamed him. Even the mother had rebuked him sharply. Looking into the child's radiant face he understood that she had no vocation for a holy life. Was not the hand of God over all his children? There were strange mysteries no one could fathom. He uttered no word of persuasion, he could not. God would guide.
To Jeanne it was an almost heart-breaking interview. Impassioned tenderness might have won, to lifelong regret, but it was duty, the salvation of her soul always uppermost.
"Still I should not be with you," said Jeanne. "I should take up a strange life among strangers. We could not talk over the past, nor be the dearest of human beings to each other—"
"That is the cross," interrupted the mother. "Sinful desires must be nailed to it."
And all her warm, throbbing, eager life, her love for all human creatures, for all of God's works.
Jeanne Angelot stood up very straight. Her laughing face grew almost severe.
"I cannot do it. I belong to my father. You sent me to him once. I—I love him."
The mother turned and left the room. At that instant she could not trust herself to say farewell.