“I do not know.”
“What do you think?”
“I think it is from God.”
While the Breton did not perceive it, the wife had in a way become less wilful, though her moods were yet as the river’s wind; her words as changeful as the mocking-bird’s song; her impetuosity as uncertain as those strange storms that come down through the gorges of Kai Fong. One moment sweetly naïve as a child, the next abrupt and full of cold scorn; she still chided, still coaxed and scolded, though sometimes her words caressed. She questioned and derided as in the past, and still brought doubt into his sensitive eyes only to laugh it away.
The fact is, however, that in the rapid rush of time, the wife laughed less, and in no such manner as she did during the first weeks of his tutorship; then it was part of her always, and he heard it even in her most impatient moments. She welcomed him with it; mocked and scorned with its music, and when he departed its petulant echoes ceased at no time in his heart.
So as months passed and the eyes of the Breton lost their melancholy shadows, there crept imperceptibly into the wife’s laughter a softened, doubtful tingle. It was as though the sadness, which went out from his eyes, was finding its way into her laugh.
“Will you never finish that book?” she complained.
“You do not like it?” He looked up hastily, a shadow in his eyes.
“No!” she answered sharply.
“I have two other books,” he suggested, not turning his eyes away from the crevices.