The good old priest, pleased with the future his imagination had created, rambled on. But after the first Gabriel hardly heard him. Margot his wife! The hot blood flamed to cheek and brow, then the flash faded, leaving him paler than before. Who was it that dared thus to handle the sweet familiar affection, from whose leaves the delicate bud, destined in the fullness of time to expand into the radiant flower of a strong man’s love, peeped forth so timidly that he himself had not yet ventured to do more than glance at it and then avert his eyes? When had he first known that those cool, green leaves held for him such a pearl of price? It was at his last parting from Margot, when forced to flee and leave those so helpless and so dear to the mercy of Le Loutre. The remembrance of this parting had never left him, despite danger, suffering, dread, not for one little hour. But that any one should speak of that of which he had never yet spoken to himself! Gradually, however, the sense of shock, of desecration, faded; and when after a long and patient waiting M. Girard addressed him almost in the very words once used by the abbé, but with very different intention, his answer this time was prompt and decisive.
“Mon fils, art thou boy or man?”
“I am a man, mon père.”
“Well, think on what I have said.”
The priest gathered up his skirts and arose.
“But, Margot, mon père? Her desires may be quite other——”
Gabriel’s cheeks were hot again. He faltered in his speech. The old man looked him up and down. Yes, he was a goodly youth. A queer little smile flickered on the priest’s thin-lipped mouth, but all he said was:
“My son, these things arrange themselves.”
He turned to go. Gabriel stood where he had left him, dreamy-eyed and quiet. Then, with a start he came to himself. He was allowing M. Girard to go, and nothing was settled. This was no time for dreams impossible of immediate fulfillment; there was work to be done, and that quickly. With one bound he had overtaken the priest and laid his hand on his arm.
“But soon—in a day, two days—the abbé will know me disobedient here,” he cried. “I cannot go to Port Royal, neither can the gran’-père endure the toilsome journey hither. O mon père, advise, counsel me.”