And nothing could have been more tender, nothing more serene than her reply, and the kiss wherewith she just touched his hair:
"Of course I love you, dear Laurent. You have so often asked me that. Why do you ask again?"
"Because I want to make sure of you, Fernande," he retorted vehemently, as both his arms closed round her now. "I want to make sure," he reiterated passionately. "I would give my soul to know what goes on behind that exquisite, white forehead of yours. Oh, of course you are a child: you don't understand—you cannot—the torture which the serenity of your blue eyes inflicts on me at moments like this, when I long to kiss you and yet feel that your sweet lips will not answer to mine with the same thrill of passion which has gone nigh to searing my soul."
"Dear Laurent," murmured Fernande with tender indulgence. She disengaged herself quite gently from his arms, and then coolly divested herself of her gardening apron.
"There," she said gaily, "it is too dark to go on weeding. We'll go for a walk, dear cousin, an you have a mind. Dear, foolish Laurent! I believe you are ready to cry! Why, on such a lovely spring evening as this I feel as if I could run singing and shouting through the woods! Come with me to the lake. I feel sure the fairy pigeons will be cooing to-night, and the white dove rise from its watery prison, never to be captured again. You know the legend, dear cousin, do you not? Old Matthieu told it me in his quaint, halting way. Come to the lake and I'll tell it you. Perhaps we'll see the white pigeon. If we do, it means that we have found lasting happiness...."
"More like we'll only hear the grey ones," he rejoined with a sigh. "Yes, I know the legend of the fairy pigeons—but they are not like to foretell happiness for any of us just now."
"Father is very anxious," she mused.
"So are we all. We are arming the countryside as fast as we can, but we have so little money ... so few opportunities for drilling the raw village lads in the use of arms, so little place wherein to keep our stores. Fouché's spies are everywhere. One does not know whom one can trust. Oh, if we had La Frontenay and Ronnay de Maurel's wealth at our disposal, King Louis would be back in France ere the leaves which are now unfolding have fallen from the trees."
"You shall have both. That is to be my affair."