"Life's too big for us, Mam'selle," he said, "too big for us. There are times when it lets us run along, lets us believe we are managing it. Then comes something like this war that proves that when life needs us, it clutches us again.
"It needs those two out there on the road in the moonlight, one groping, the other leading; on and on! Life will use them for its own purposes. No use in struggling, Mam'selle; life has us all by the throat."
"You're a strange man, Mr. Law."
Jo was trembling.
"You're a strange woman, Mam'selle."
There was a pause. Out on the road Donelle was singing a little French song, one she had brought with her out of the Home at St. Michael's.
"You and I," Law continued, "have learned some of life's lessons in a hard school, Mam'selle. Many of our teachers have been the same; they've made us hew where others have molded, but I'm thinking we have come to know the true values of things, you and I. The value of labour, companionship on the long road, a hearth fire somewhere at the close of the day."
And now Law held out his hand as a good friend does to another.
"I wish, Mam'selle," his voice grew wonderfully kind, "I wish you could bring yourself to—travel the rest of the way with me."
The door was wide open, the fair moonlight lay across the porch, but Jo was thinking of another night when the howling wind had pressed a warning against the door and Pierre Gavot defiled the shelter she had wrung from her life battle—Pierre the Redeemed!