"Some one closer than Daddy John. I want to leave you with David."
Her antagonism rose higher, sweeping over her wretchedness. Worn and strained she had difficulty to keep her lips shut on it, to prevent herself from crying out her outraged protests. All her dormant womanhood, stirring to wakefulness in the last few weeks, broke into life, gathering itself in a passion of revolt, abhorrent of the indignity, ready to flare into vehement refusal. To the dim eyes fastened on her she was merely the girl, reluctant still. He watched her down-drooped face and said:
"Then I could go in peace. Am I asking too much?"
She made a negative movement with her head and turned her face away from him.
"You'll do this for my happiness now?"
"Anything," she murmured.
"It will be also for your own."
He moved his free hand and clasped it on the mound made by their locked fingers. Through the stillness a man's voice singing Zavier's Canadian song came to them. It stopped at the girl's outer ear, but, like a hail from a fading land, penetrated to the man's brain and he stirred.
"Hist!" he said raising his brows, "there's that French song your mother used to sing."
The distant voice rose to the plaintive burden and he lay motionless, his eyes filmed with memories. As the present dimmed the past grew clearer. His hold on the moment relaxed and he slipped away from it on a tide of recollection, muttering the words.