"I feel as if I was beginning my life all over again, don't you, Maitre
Ranulph?"
Her black eyes had been fixed on his, and the fire in them was as bright and full of health and truth as the fire at his feet.
And he had answered her: "I think I feel that too, garcon Carterette."
To which she had replied: "It isn't hard to forget here—not so very hard, is it?"
She did not mean Guida, nor what he had felt for Guida, but rather the misery of the past. He had nodded his head in reply, but had not spoken; and she, with a quick: "A bi'tot," had taken her blanket and gone to that portion of the rock set apart for her own. Then he had sat by the fire thinking through the long hours of night until the sun rose. That day Richambeau had sent his flag of truce, and the end of their stay on Perch Rock was come.
Yes, he would marry Carterette. Yet he was not disloyal, even in memory. What had belonged to Guida belonged to her for ever, belonged to a past life with which henceforth he should have naught to do. What had sprung up in his heart for Carterette belonged to the new life. In this new land there was work to do—what might he not accomplish here? He realised that within one life a man may still live several lives, each loyal and honest after its kind. A fate stronger than himself had brought him here; and here he would stay with fate. It had brought him to Carterette, and who could tell what good and contentment might not yet come to him, and how much to her!
That evening he went to Carterette and asked her to be his wife. She turned pale, and, looking up into his eyes with a kind of fear, she said brokenly:
"It's not because you feel you must? It's not because you know I love you, Ranulph—is it? It's not for that alone?"
"It is because I want you, garcon Carterette," he answered tenderly, "because life will be nothing without you."
"I am so happy—par made, I am so happy!" she answered, and she hid her face on his breast.