“Her reward!”
“Ah, monsieur! She was an angel of light to the dying mother. She prayed with and she sang to her; and sometimes she would, with her voice, earn a silver livre by the way—enough, in the end, to buy the little place of rest in the churchyard.”
“Laurent, you are starved and frozen. Laurent—do you hear? I also am alone in the world. You shall come with me, and be my servant and companion; and we will travel, always travel; until at last, wayworn and tired, we shall come back, we, too, to the little place of rest.”
He turned, greatly moved, through the gate into the gardens.
“Come!” he whispered—then he checked himself, and faced suddenly on the astonished Cagot.
“Tell me!” he cried. “What would the Cagot think of him that wilfully withheld her soul’s cure from a poor shameful woman that loved him?”
“That he feared—that he feared, monsieur.”
“Feared what?”
“To discharge his enemy from her thrall.”
“I said she loved him.”