"But it is of wool,—it will shrink," she said, anxiously.
He laughed, dried her white arms on his handkerchief, and begged her to sit down on a bench beside him.
She shyly drew back and, pulling down her sleeves, seated herself on a stool opposite.
"Rose," he said, seriously, "do you know how to flirt?"
Her beautiful lips parted, and she laughed in a gleeful, wholehearted way that reminded him of Narcisse. "I think that it would be possible to learn," she said, demurely.
Vesper did not offer to teach her. He fell into an intoxicated silence, and sat musing on this, the purest and sweetest passion of his life. What had she done—this simple Acadien woman—to fill his heart with such profound happiness? A light from the window behind her shone around her flaxen head, and reminded him of the luminous halos surrounding the heads of her favorite saints. Since the ecstatic dreams of boyhood he had experienced nothing like this,—and yet this dream was more extended, more spiritual and less earthly than those, for infinite worlds of happiness now unfolded themselves to his vision, and endless possibilities and responsibilities stretched out before him. This woman's life would be given fearlessly into his hands, and also the life of her child. He, Vesper Nimmo, almost a broken link in humanity's chain, would become once more a part in the glorious whole.
Rose, enraptured with this intellectual love-making, sat watching every varying emotion playing over her lover's face. How different he was from Charlitte,—ah, poor Charlitte!—and she shuddered. He was so rough, so careless. He had been like a good-natured bear that wished a plaything. He had not loved her as gently, as tenderly as this man did.
"Rose," asked Vesper, suddenly, "what is the matter with Agapit?"
"I do not know," she said, and her face grew troubled. "Perhaps he is angry that I have told a story, for I said I would not marry."