Something had waked the bigger part of her, which had never been awake in the days of Palass Poucette. Jean Jacques was much older than she, but what she felt had nothing to do with age, or place or station. It had only to do with understanding, with the call of nature and of a motherhood crying for expression. Her heart ached for him.
"Well, good-bye, my friend," he said, and held out his hand. "I must be going now."
"Wait," she said, and there was something insistent and yet pleading in her voice. "I've got something to say. You must hear it. . . . Why should you go? There is my farm—it needs to be worked right. It has got good chances. It has water-power and wood and the best flax in the province—they want to start a flax-mill on it—I've had letters from big men in Montreal. Well, why shouldn't you do it instead? There it is, the farm, and there am I a woman alone. I need help. I've got no head. I have to work at a sum of figures all night to get it straight. . . . Ah, m'sieu', it is a need both sides! You want someone to look after you; you want a chance again to do things; but you want someone to look after you, and it is all waiting there on the farm. Palass Poucette left behind him seven sound horses, and cows and sheep, and a threshing- machine and a fanning-mill, and no debts, and two thousand dollars in the bank. You will never do anything away from here. You must stay here, where—where I can look after you, Jean Jacques."
The light in his eyes flamed up, died down, flamed up again, and presently it covered all his face, as he grasped what she meant.
"Wonder of God, do you forget?" he asked. "I am married—married still, Virginie Poucette. There is no divorce in the Catholic Church—no, none at all. It is for ever and ever."
"I said nothing about marriage," she said bravely, though her face suffused.
"Hand of Heaven, what do you mean? You mean to say you would do that for me in spite of the Cure and—and everybody and everything?"
"You ought to be taken care of," she protested. "You ought to have your chance again. No one here is free to do it all but me. You are alone. Your wife that was—maybe she is dead. I am alone, and I'm not afraid of what the good God will say. I will settle with Him myself. Well, then, do you think I'd care what—what Mere Langlois or the rest of the world would say? . . . I can't bear to think of you going away with nothing, with nobody, when here is something and somebody—somebody who would be good to you. Everybody knows that you've been badly used— everybody. I'm young enough to make things bright and warm in your life, and the place is big enough for two, even if it isn't the Manor Cartier."
"Figure de Christ, do you think I'd let you do it—me?" declared Jean Jacques, with lips trembling now and his shoulders heaving. Misfortune and pain and penalty he could stand, but sacrifice like this and—and whatever else it was, were too much for him. They brought him back to the dusty road and everyday life again; they subtracted him from his big dream, in which he had been detached from the details of his catastrophe.
"No, no, no," he added. "You go look another way, Virginie. Turn your face to the young spring, not to the dead winter. To-morrow I'll be gone to find what I've got to find. I've finished here, but there's many a good man waiting for you—men who'll bring you something worth while besides themselves. Make no mistake, I've finished. I've done my term of life. I'm only out on ticket-of-leave now—but there, enough, I shall always want to think of you. I wish I had something to give you—but yes, here is something." He drew from his pocket a silver napkin-ring. "I've had that since I was five years old. My uncle Stefan gave it to me. I've always used it. I don't know why I put it in my pocket this morning, but I did. Take it. It's more than money. It's got something of Jean Jacques about it. You've got the Barbille fruit-dish-that is a thing I'll remember. I'm glad you've got it, and—"