“It is not quite St. Louis,” she would say, with a half smile meant to be gay, but was pensive instead.
“No. But we will return presently,” the eyes full of cheerful light and the tone hopeful.
“And never leave it again?”
“I am glad you cannot forget it.”
“Oh, there is no place like the home and the friends of childhood—the larger childhood, when everything is impressed on one’s heart. The old house and the shop and the wide chimneys and Mère Lunde, and the Marchands with their babies. I know what it is to be an exile.”
Still she and André were very happy, taking the leisure of life like two children, growing into each other’s souls, laughing over some of the old times. And she would say:
“How could you love me so well when I was horrid and provoking and tormented you so?”
“But you had moments of rare sweetness, ma’m’selle; and sometimes the bee works a long while before he can extract the honey.”
“And you have never once been sorry?”
“The sorrow would have come if I had not gained you—a lifelong sorrow.”