Forthwith she quenched the light, preferring it so, and seated herself again by the window to repeat the last Aves. When she had finished, a scruple assailed her, and a fear lest she had erred in the reckoning, because it had not always been possible to count the beads of her rosary. Out of prudence she recited yet another fifty and then was silent-jaded, weary, but full of happy confidence, as though the moment had brought her a promise inviolable.
The world outside was lit; wrapped in that frore splendour which the night unrolls over lands of snow when the sky is clear and the moon is shining. Within the house was darkness, and it seemed that wood and field had illumined themselves to signal the coming of the holy hour.
"The thousand Aves have been said," murmured Maria to herself, "but I have not yet asked for anything ... not in words." She had thought that perhaps it were not needful; that the Divinity might understand without hearing wishes shaped by lips—Mary above all ... Who had been a woman upon earth. But at the last her simple mind was taken with a doubt, and she tried to find speech for the favour she was seeking.
François Paradis ... Most surely it concerns François Paradis. Hast Thou already guessed it, O Mary, full of grace? How might she frame this her desire without impiety? That he should be spared hardship in the woods ... That he should be true to his word and give up drinking and swearing ... That he return in the spring.
That he return in the spring ... She goes no further, for it seems to her that when he is with her again, his promise kept, all the happiness in the world must be within their reach, unaided ... almost unaided ... If it be not presumptuous so to think ...
That he return in the spring ... Dreaming of his return, of François, the handsome sunburnt face turned to hers, Maria forgets all else, and looks long with unseeing eyes at the snow-covered ground which the moonlight has turned into a glittering fabric of ivory and mother-of-pearl-at the black pattern of the fences outlined upon it, and the menacing ranks of the dark forest.
CHAPTER X
STRAYING TRACKS
NEW YEAR'S DAY, and not a single caller! Toward evening the mother of the family, a trifle cast down, hid her depression behind a mask of extra cheeriness. "Even if no one comes," said she, "that is no reason for allowing ourselves to be unhappy. We are going to make la tire."