“My heart is thine, and soul and body render
Faith to thy faith; I give nor hold in thrall:
Take all, dear love! thou art my life’s defender;
Speak to my soul! Take life and love; take all!”
She was lifted up by the abandonment of the verse, by the fulness of her own feelings, which had only needed a touch of beauty to give it exaltation. The touch had come.
She went on abstractedly to the place where she had trysted with her thoughts only, these many years, and, sitting down, watched the sun sink beyond the trees, the shades of evening fall. All that had happened since Charley came to the parish she went over in her mind. She remembered the day he had said this, the day he had said that; she brought back the night—it was etched upon her mind!—when he had said to her, “You have saved my life, Mademoiselle!” She recalled the time she put the little cross back on the church-door, the ghostly footsteps in the church, the light, the lost hood. A shudder ran through her now, for the mystery of that hood had never been cleared up. But the words on the page caught her eye again:
“My heart is thine, and soul and body render
Faith to thy faith...”
It swallowed up the moment’s agitation. Never till this day, never till last night, had she dared to say to herself, He loves me. He seemed so far above her—she never had thought of him as a tailor!—that she had given and never dared hope to receive, had lived without anticipation lest there should come despair. Even that day at Vadrome Mountain she had not thought he meant love, when he had said to her that he would remember to the last. When he had said that he would die for love’s sake, he had not meant her, but others—some one else whom he would save by his death. Kathleen, that name which had haunted her—ah, whoever Kathleen was, or whatever Kathleen had to do with him or his life, she had no reason to fear Kathleen now. She had no reason to fear any one; for had she not heard his words of love as he clasped her in his arms last night? Had she not fled from that enfolding, because her heart was so full in the hour of her triumph that she could not bear more, could not look longer into the eyes to which she had told her love before his was spoken?
In the midst of her thoughts she heard footsteps. She started up. Paulette Dubois suddenly appeared in the path below. She had taken the river-path down from Vadrome Mountain, where she had gone to see Jo Portugais, who had not yet returned from Quebec. Paulette’s face was agitated, her manner nervous. For nights she had not slept, and her approaching meeting with the tailor had made her tremble all day. Excited as she was, there was a wild sort of beauty in her face, and her figure was lithe and supple. She dressed always a little garishly, but now there was only that band of colour round the throat, worn last night in the talk with Charley.
To both women this meeting was as a personal misfortune, a mutual affront. Each had a natural antipathy. To Rosalie the invasion of her beloved retreat was as hateful as though the woman had purposely intruded.
For a moment they confronted each other without speaking, then Rosalie’s natural courtesy, her instinctive good-heartedness, overcame her irritation, and she said quietly:
“Good-evening, Madame.”
“I am not Madame, and you know it,” answered the woman harshly.