"All these years," she said, with a remnant of defiance—"all these years he has been mine. I did not get married, me, because that would have let him belong to you."
Zabette sighed wearily. "And all these years I have been saying the same thing. And yet I could never forget the shell box and your letter from St. Pierre Miquelon. Come, don't you see how much easier it will be—how much more natural—if we put our treasures together: all we have of Maxence, and call him ours?"
Suzanne was beginning to yield, but doubtfully. "If it would be proper," she said.
"Not if he were living, of course," replied the other, with assurance. "The laws of the church forbid that. But in the course of a lifetime a husband may have more than one wife. I do not see why, when a husband is dead, two wives should not have him. Do you?"
"I will come," said Suzanne, softly and gratefully. "I am so lonely."
Three years later the two women moved from the Grande Anse into the village, renting the little cottage with the dormer windows in which they have lived ever since. You must look far to find so devoted a pair. They are more than sisters to each other. If their lives have not been happy, as the world judges happiness, they have at least been illumined by two great and abiding loves,—which does not happen often,—that for the dead, and that for each other.