He had slipped to the ground beside her. She drew his head back in her lap, her hand pressed hard against his forehead.
"Dieu! but I am content," she breathed in his ear.
He felt her warm tears dropping fast upon his cheek.
All night she lay in the straw wide awake, flushed, in a sort of fever. At daylight she drove her cows back to the marsh without having barely touched her soup.
Far across the bay glistened the roof of a barn under construction. An object the size of a beetle was crawling over the new boards.
It was Jean.
"I'm a fool," he thought, as he drove in a nail. Then he fell to thinking of a girl in his own village whose father was as rich as the Père Bourron.
"Sacré Diable!" he laughed at length, "if every one got married who had sworn by Sainte Marie, Monsieur le Curé would do a good business."