Philip was staring at her in amaze. "You mean to say that you never hear from him, either, and that you have never seen him—?"
Her face paled. "Yes, I have seen him. Once. There were convicts working on one of the roads near Frankfort. I spoke to them as I passed—men in that dress always interest me now. One of them did not answer me, did not even lift his head to look at me. I looked more closely—"
"It was he?"
She nodded. "Working on the road like a common laborer, a negro! Oh, I went to the warden about it myself. I railed at him, asked him how he dared put such a man at that work, a gentleman. He heard me through patiently enough—after all, what business was it of mine? When I finished, he explained that he had put Jacques on the road at his own request, granted as a reward for help during an epidemic in the prison. Jacques had chosen it."
"Chosen it! Why?"
"Because it was out of doors, beyond the walls. Because he wanted to see the sky, and trees, and birds. He always loved birds...."
She felt Philip shaking, and with a gesture of infinite tenderness, drew his head down on her shoulder.
"He had changed so little, dear, so little. But it was years ago. Now he must seem older. Have you forgotten how he looks? You were such a child when he went. Glance into your mirror and you will see him again. The same eyes that flash blue in your dark face, the same smile, the same look of gentleness; strong gentleness. You are simply your father over again. That is why I love you so." She laid her cheek on his hair.
If the words brought a stab of pain that was almost unendurable, she did not guess it. From the moment her first child was laid in her arms, Kate, like many another woman, regarded herself as a mother to all mankind. For her, this was the boy Jacques had left in her care, the husband she had chosen for her own little girl; doubly, therefore, her son. That she was less than ten years his senior, the one beautiful woman in his world, the heroine of all a young man's idealism—of these things she was as unaware as of the fact that Jacques' boy had long ago left boyhood behind him.
He stayed where she lightly held him, his head rigid upon her shoulder, conscious in every fiber of his being of the cheek pressing his hair, the warmth and fragrance of her, the rise and fall of her soft bosom—praying with all the strength that was in him to become to this beloved woman only the son she thought him, nothing more, never anything more. The Benoix men came of a race of great lovers.