"Indeed I am not!" he unnecessarily assured her, for the kiss he put on it must have convinced her that he was flesh and blood, and perhaps the wave of colour which once more dyed her face derived its temperature from the warmth of that salutation.
"But you . . . M. le Chevalier, but you have returned from the dead! They told me you had been shot!"
"Yes, I have returned from the dead," agreed Fortuné—"for a purpose."
She did not ask what the purpose was; she still seemed shaken, uncertain of herself and of him. But her gaze, swift and compassionate, swept over everything that the sunlight showed so relentlessly—the traces of past suffering on his face, the added grey at his temples, and the pinned-up sleeve.
"Ah, que vous avez dû souffrir!" she said to herself. Then she put her hand to her head, as if she still felt herself in a dream.
"But where have you come from, M. le Chevalier?" she asked. "And why are you here, in Sark?"
He looked at her full, and answered bluntly, "To ask you to marry me!"
But as, giving an exclamation, she turned away, he hastily abandoned this ground.
"I have nothing to offer you, Madame," he went on quickly. "Neither money nor position nor a home, nor even two arms to defend you. The Republic has taken all those. And—for I am determined to be very frank with you—I must tell you that for ten years my heart has not been my own to offer. It was pledged to a memory. It has come back to me now, thank God, but I fear it has the dust of those years on it, and I am no longer very young." He paused a moment, and the sea of Sark, that is for ever booming in its enchanted caverns, gave a dull echo to his words. "It is because you too, Raymonde, have greatly loved and hated—I happen, do I not, to know how much?" he added, with the shadow of a smile—"that I am thus open with you. But my old love and hate are both over and done with now. I have a new, a better love—and it is all yours, as long as I shall live."
Mme. de Guéfontaine was examining a single childish bloom of gorse, just outgrowing its rough yellow-brown pinafore. And she said nothing.