She hid her face again. She did like him. She felt it in the hot color that stained her cheek.
“He will be gone a year—that is not long,” she said in a rather hopeful tone.
“Or, he might decide to stay longer. If he has nothing to call him back——”
They would be lonely without him. She would be lonely. After all, there were few young men to compare with him. And some time—if he was quite sure she did not care for him, he might marry. She never could marry any one else, but, then—men were different. Oh, here was one who had never put a woman in his first love’s place! And André was all alone in the world. Yes, he would need a wife——
“Oh, Uncle Gaspard, I am not worth all this love!” she cried remorsefully.
“You will always be worth it to two men,” he said in so gentle a tone that it pierced her heart. “I am much older than you, dear, and some day I shall be called upon to take the journey from which one never returns. Then you will be left quite alone.”
What made her think of the little girl in the old château to whom the days were so long and lonesome? Yet, it would be very sad to be left alone. And—after all——
There are so many “after alls” in life. And so many things seem insurmountable when looked at in a moment of passion. Uncle Denys could never give her wholly away, had never planned to do that. Fathers and mothers were happy to have their children married, and here she would not do this for the best friend she had, nor for the man who loved her sincerely—that she loved—a little.
“You ought to shut me up in the loft and keep me on—on pemican, which you know I hate, and declare you would never let me out until—until——”
“A woman’s love must always be a free gift, Renée, darling. And if you do not love André it would be sinning against him to marry him.”