"Shall we be unfaithful to our race?" said her cousin, inexorably.
"What is our race?" she asked, wildly. "There are the Acadiens, there are also the Americans,—the one Lord makes all. Agapit, permit that we tell him."
"Think of your oath, Rose."
"My oath—my oath—and did I not also swear to love him? I told him only yesterday, and now I must give him up forever, and cause him pain. Agapit, you shall tell him. He must not go away angry. Ah, my cousin, my cousin," and, evading Vesper, she stretched out the prayer-book, "by our holy religion, I beg that you have pity. Tell him, tell him,—I shall never see him again. It will kill me if he goes angry from me."
There were tears of agony in her eyes, and Agapit faltered as he surveyed her.
"We are to be alone here all the years," she said, "you and I. It will be a sin even to think of the past. Let us have no thought to start with as sad as this, that we let one so dear go out in the world blaming us."
"Well, then," said Agapit, sullenly, "I surrender. Tell you this stranger; let him have part in an unusual shame of our people."
"I tell him!" and she drew back, hurt and startled. "No, Agapit, that confession comes better from thee. Adieu, adieu," and she turned, in a paroxysm of tenderness, to Vesper, and in her anguish burst into her native language. "After this minute, I must put thee far from my thoughts,—thou, so good, so kind, that I had hoped to walk with through life. But purgatory does not last forever; the blessed saints also suffered. After we die, perhaps—" and she buried her face in her hands, and wept violently.
"But do not thou remember," she said at last, checking her tears. "Go out into the world and find another, better wife. I release thee, go, go—"