“It seems to me that it is the anchor of life,” answered the girl in a low voice.
He looked at her again with a little wonder. There was something almost passionate in the tone with which she spoke those few words. His next question came out abruptly.
“Does your present residence suit you? Are you sure that you would not prefer a change?” Thérèse thought of the convent, and turned sick. “I do not wish for any change,” she said, hurriedly.
“You are content to remain where you are?”
It was a strange sort of contentment, Thérèse thought, with a quick flash of self-pity; but the other place of refuge that was open to her would be unbearable. She said yes to his question, and then despised herself for the falseness of her answer. “Every place must be a little sad to me, just now, monsieur,” she went on, “for I belong to no one. But I am glad to stay at Mme. Roulleau’s.”
He did not answer. She thought, perhaps, he had not listened to her pathetic little explanation; she did not know that it had gone straight for his heart. The pity that he had felt once or twice before became more intense, more personal. Perhaps the time and circumstances helped the feeling: the evening was soft, quiet, almost solemn; all his sympathies had been called out that day by the little child’s deathbed. “Let me go to sleep,” the little tired voice had said; there was no more pain afterwards, except in the hearts of the watchers. The words came back to him continually, with a vision of the tiny, wasted, flushed face; any appeal would have touched him in his present mood, and Thérèse seemed only an older child, with no one, as she said, to care for her. He walked on, thinking silently, and she made a great effort to put a question into words.
“Have you heard nothing yet of Monsieur Saint-Martin?”
“Nothing, nothing. One would have supposed that by this time a letter—a message, at least—might have reached Ardron. It would seem that the estrangement was serious. Why do people take so much trouble to forge their own unhappiness, Mademoiselle Veuillot?”
There are many ways of doing that work, innocent, unconscious ways, sometimes. At this very moment, M. Deshoulières, with his big, manly, pitiful heart, was laying it open and making it ready for the sharp red-hot thrusts that came afterwards. We do the same, all of us, often. We grind the weapons that are to wound us. But, thank God, the weapons are not always evil, and such leave no poison in the wound.
“Mademoiselle, did you hear the clock strike?” said Nannon, bustling up. “We must make haste, the days grow so short, and the virgins up there do not carry their lamps lit.”