“It is very late,” Madame Guibert broke in. “Stay with us, Jean. You must dine with us—you are not hard to please. Afterwards you can go back to Rose Villa.”
He hesitated a minute.
“I cannot,” he said. “My uncle would be anxious. I was rude to him just now on the road and I don’t wish to cause him fresh annoyance.”
He told Paule of M. Loigny’s unaccomplished official mission.
“Come back with him to-morrow for luncheon, then,” continued Madame Guibert. “Tell him that the garden will play its part in the fête. We shall have our loveliest flowers on the table. They will entertain him. Then we will all go and celebrate your engagement at the village church.”
As Jean left Le Maupas he found darkness in the oakwood. Joyfully and in no haste he descended the wooded hillside, as though it were the plain straight path of his well-ordered life in the days to come; the same hillside that Marcel had once mounted running, with the fire of love in his heart and the savor of danger upon his dry lips.
That night Paule was late in getting to sleep. She welcomed love with a steadfast heart, and with a serious feeling that made her resolution the firmer, not the weaker. She had climbed the hill of her youth, fighting difficulties, both physical and moral, as the hardy mountain-sheep struggle upward through the bushes which tear their fleeces on the way. Now it seemed to her that she was walking over a plain and that her bare feet were treading the soft grass. The sky before her was full of light. And what did it matter to her if she still had to climb? Would she not hereafter have a stronger arm to lean upon? And did she not feel in herself a new courage?
But Paule had been asleep a long time when her mother was still watching and praying.
“My God,” the poor woman murmured, “for the first time in my life I have told a lie. Forgive me. These two children had to be brought together. They were made for each other. Should not their happiness go before mine? I am too old to follow them. I cannot leave my dead. The earth is calling to me and Thou will soon summon me. Here I will await the hour that Thou hast fixed. But grant me strength, Oh my God, to bear this last separation calmly. I had grown accustomed to Paule’s care and Thou remindest me, in taking away my only earthly joy, that we cannot attach ourselves for ever to this world’s goods. In leaving me she will take away the heart which Thou hast filled, before breaking it. I offer Thee my sorrows beforehand, so that Thou mayst shower the most abundant blessings on my sons, including Jean, and on my daughters, on the living and the dead.”
She prayed a long time. At last she found peace in resignation, and her tardy slumbers were tranquil.