Melicent’s attentions did not last in their ultra-effusiveness, but she found Fanny less objectionable since removed from her St. Louis surroundings; and the evident consideration with which she had been accepted at Place-du-Bois seemed to throw about her a halo of sufficient distinction to impel the girl to view her from a new and different stand-point.
But the charm of plantation life was letting go its hold upon Melicent. Grégoire’s adoration alone, and her feeble response to it were all that kept her.
“I neva felt anything like this befo’,” he said, as they stood together and their hands touched in reaching for a splendid rose that hung invitingly from its tall latticed support out in mid lawn. The sun had come again and dried the last drop of lingering moisture on grass and shrubbery.
“W’en I’m away f’om you, even fur five minutes, ’t seems like I mus’ hurry quick, quick, to git back again; an’ w’en I’m with you, everything ’pears all right, even if you don’t talk to me or look at me. Th’ otha day, down at the gin,” he continued, “I was figurin’ on some weights an’ wasn’t thinkin’ about you at all, an’ all at once I remember’d the one time I’d kissed you. Goodness! I couldn’t see the figures any mo’, my head swum and the pencil mos’ fell out o’ my han’. I neva felt anything like it: hones’, Miss Melicent, I thought I was goin’ to faint fur a minute.”
“That’s very unwise, Grégoire,” she said, taking the roses that he handed her to add to the already large bunch. “You must learn to think of me calmly: our love must be something like a sacred memory—a sweet recollection to help us through life when we are apart.”
“I don’t know how I’m goin’ to stan’ it. Neva to see you! neva—my God!” he gasped, paling and crushing between his nervous fingers the flower she would have taken from him.
“There is nothing in this world that one cannot grow accustomed to, dear,” spoke the pretty philosopher, picking up her skirts daintily with one hand and passing the other through his arm—the hand which held the flowers, whose peculiar perfume ever afterwards made Grégoire shiver through a moment of pain that touched very close upon rapture.
He was more occupied than he liked during those busy days of harvesting and ginning, that left him only brief and snatched intervals of Melicent’s society. If he could have rested in the comfort of being sure of her, such moments of separation would have had their compensation in reflective anticipation. But with his undisciplined desires and hot-blooded eagerness, her half-hearted acknowledgments and inadequate concessions, closed her about with a chilling barrier that staggered him with its problematic nature. Feeling himself her equal in the aristocracy of blood, and her master in the knowledge and strength of loving, he resented those half understood reasons which removed him from the possibility of being anything to her. And more, he was angry with himself for acquiescing in that self understood agreement. But it was only in her absence that these thoughts disturbed him. When he was with her, his whole being rejoiced in her existence and there was no room for doubt or dread.
He felt himself regenerated through love, and as having no part in that other Grégoire whom he only thought of to dismiss with unrecognition.
The time came when he could ill conceal his passion from others. Thérèse became conscious of it, through an unguarded glance. The unhappiness of the situation was plain to her; but to what degree she could not guess. It was certainly so deplorable that it would have been worth while to have averted it. Yet, she felt great faith in the power of time and absence to heal such wounds even to the extent of leaving no tell-tale scar.