His arms were around her. God, the sorrow and the misery he had brought to her, who had so freely laid aside her own happiness that he—that he— He drew her closer still.
"Marie-Louise, are you happy?" he cried out, and it was his soul that spoke, yearning, pleading fiercely for the assurance that meant all in life to him now, the assurance that alone could stand, radiant and thankful, where before, in keen, bitter pangs of remorse, had stood the memories of the past—of her betrayal. "Marie-Louise, are you happy?" he cried out again.
"I did not know that one could be so happy, Jean," she said softly—and her hand lifted to touch his face, and linger there, smoothing the hair back from his forehead.
They were silent for a little while in each other's arms—a deep peace, a quiet thankfulness in their hearts.
And then Jean spoke again.
"Look, Marie-Louise!" he said, and pointed out far over the waters to the horizon line ahead. "It is the dawn. Our dawn, Marie-Louise. The dawn of the day when we shall be together always."
Grey it was in the east; faint and timorous streaks of light that seemed like skirmishers flung out in tentative attack upon the massed blackness of the night.
Her hands tightened about him.
"To-day! Oh, Jean! It is like a dream—like a wonderful dream that the bon Dieu has brought to us."
He drew her head to his shoulder. Presently, when in the east that greyness should have grown pink and golden with awakening day, he would drink in the pure, glorious beauty of the sweet, chaste face, look into the dark, brave, tender eyes and read in her soul the happiness that God had restored to them; but now he could only hold her close and feel the lithe young form against his own, and feel her heart throb against his breast.