Jean shifted uneasily, as she did not speak.
"I will make you another, Marie-Louise," he blurted out appeasingly. "To-day—to-morrow—whenever you like, I will make you another. Then it will be all right, eh, petite?"
She shook her head—and the words came very slowly.
"You can never make another beacon, Jean."
"How—not another?" he cried impetuously. "I can make a thousand! Did I not tell you that it was you—has it not those lips that I could fashion even in the dark, even if you were far away from me! Tiens, do you not see—I could make a thousand! And to-morrow you shall have another."
The dark eyes were full.
"Was it yours to give, Jean?" she asked.
It was true! He had nothing to say to that. She was crying. He was angry now because he could say nothing, because there was no excuse for what he had done—and yet he would do it again. But he could not tell Marie-Louise that though, pardieu! She would only cry the harder. And because she was right and he had nothing to say, he groped, angry with himself, for some defence.
"Ah!" he burst out sharply. "So that is it! Yesterday you would have thought nothing of it, but now you have been listening to what they say, and you believe it all—that it is worth a great deal of money, maybe a hundred francs, eh? Well, it is not—it is worth nothing! You have nothing to cry over."
Wide-eyed, as though a whip-lash had curled across her face, she drew back, her small hands shut tightly at her sides, as she looked at him. And then somehow that little prayer that she had prayed to the bon Dieu last night came back to her—"make me that, mon Père; make me that—Jean's beacon all through my life"—and the bitter words that were on her lips were crowded back, and she turned slowly away.