An exultant throb escaped her.
"Too late!" she said.
But he was beyond flinching.
"Let me be sure," he begged. "I was wrong, Zelie. I was blind and mad and heartless. I say so. But I give it up—I give up all that foolish gilded fancy of mine, for I see what true treasure it cost me.... Or look—petite—I give it up to you and we go seek the future together. Heaven knows if it could ever be any worth to us after—after to-night. But it's all I have. Zelie ... take it for my wedding gift!"
She looked him up and she looked him down, long and steadily.
"Comedian!" she said....
Well—it was rather hard. What? To twit that poor player at life with his poor playing. At his last and best not to believe him. At his supreme attempt to throw in his teeth that supreme mockery. Rather hard. In effect!
It left him dumb—and again across the pause, from somewhere outside, cut a shrill, thin whistle. Again came floating in among us, from nowhere at all, the spectral guardian of the gates: Carron. Again from a voice like a piping wind at a key-hole, we heard the news.
"Father Anselm has arrived. He is in the basse-cour, with the other priest. Also two sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny, who came with him."
"Father Anselm!" echoed Mother Carron, dully, in a sort of groan. "So much for my plan.... And the sisters?... So much for Bibi's! We're all finely cooked, the lot of us!" But even in disaster she could keep the uses of habit. "Sacred pig, you take your own time!" she scolded. "Was that your signal?"