"I shall close your mouth no longer, Monsieur," she had said with a grimace. "You will soon be the big, strong Jean Marcel we have always known and must not expect to be a helpless baby forever. And now that you can use your right arm, I shall no longer cut up your fish."
"But it is with great pain that I move my arm, Julie," he had protested in a feeble effort to enlist her sympathy and so prolong the personal ministrations he craved.
"Bah! When before has the great Jean Marcel feared pain? It is only a ruse, Monsieur. I am too busy, now that you can help yourself, to treat you as a child."
And so, reluctantly, Marcel had resigned himself to doing without the aid of the nimble fingers of Julie Breton. The fierce bitterness in his heart, which, before the fight on the beach with the Lelacs had made of the days an endless torment, gave place, on his recovery, to a state of mind more sane. Deep and lasting as was his wound, the realization of the girl's devoted care of him had, during his convalescence, numbed the old rawness. Gratitude and his innate manhood shamed Marcel into a suppression of his grief and the showing of a brave face to Julie Breton and the little world of Whale River. In his extremity she had stood staunchly by his side. She had been his friend, indeed. He deserved no more. And now in his prayers, for he was a devout believer in the teachings of Père Breton, he asked for her happiness.
One evening found three friends, Julie, Jean Marcel and Fleur, again walking on the shore of the Great Whale in the mellow sunset. Romping with puppy awkwardness, Fleur's progeny roved near them. The hush of an August night was upon the land. Below, the young ebb ran silently without ripple. Not a leaf stirred in the scrub edging the trail. The dead sun, master artist, had limned the heavens with all the varied magic of his palette, and the gray bay, often sullenly restless under low-banked clouds, or blanketed with mist, now reached out, a shimmering floor, to the rim of the world.
In silence the two, mute with the peace of the moment, watched the heightening splendor of the western skies. Disdaining the alluring scents of the neighboring scrub, which her puppies were exploring, Fleur kept to Marcel's side where her nose might find his hand, for she had not forgotten the days of their recent separation.
"What you did for me I can never repay." Marcel broke the silence, his eyes on the White Bear Hills, sapphire blue on southern horizon.
The girl turned impatiently.
"Monsieur Jean Marcel, what I have done, I would do for any friend. I am weary of hearing you speak of it. Have you no eyes for the sunset the good God has given us? Let us speak of that."
He smiled as one smiles at a child.