"You'll stop all night?" she said, hospitably, shuffling after him. "We have one good bed, with many feathers."
He did not hear her, for in a state of extreme boredom, and slight absent-mindedness, he had stepped out under the poplars.
"Better leave 'im alone, I guess," said Claude; then he slipped off his coat. "I'll go milk."
"An' I'll make up the bed," said his wife; and taking the hairpins out of the switch that Bidiane had made her attach to her own thick lump of hair, she laid it on the shelf by the clock, and allowed her own brown wave to stream freely down her back. Then she unfastened her corsets, which she did not dare to take off, as no woman in Bleury who did not wear that article of dress tightly enfolding her chest and waist was considered to have reached the acme of respectability. However, she could for a time allow them to gape slightly apart, and having by this proceeding added much to her comfort, she entered one of the small rooms near by.
Vesper meanwhile walked slowly towards the gate, while Bidiane watched him through a loophole in the roof. His body only was in Bleury; his heart was in Sleeping Water. Step by step he was following Rose about her daily duties. He knew just at what time of day her slender feet carried her to the stable, to the duck-yard, to the hen-house. He knew the exact hour that she entered her kitchen in the morning, and went from it to the pantry. He could see her beautiful face at the cool pantry window, as she stood mixing various dishes, and occasionally glancing at the passers-by on the road. Sometimes she sang gently to herself, "Rose of the cross, thou mystic flower," or "Dear angel ever at my side," or some of the Latin hymns to the Virgin.
At this present moment her tasks would all be done. If there were guests who desired her presence, she might be seated with them in the little parlor. If there were none, she was probably alone in her room. Of what was she thinking? The blood surged to his face, there was a beating in his ears, and he raised his suffering glance to the sky. "O God! now I know why I suffered when my father died. It was to prepare me for this."
Then his mind went back to Rose. Had she succeeded in driving his image from her pure mind and imagination? Alas! he feared not,—he would like to know. He had heard nothing of her since leaving Sleeping Water. Agapit had written once, but he had not mentioned her.
This inaction was horrible,—this place wearied him insufferably. He glanced towards his wheel, and a sentence from one of Agapit's books came into his mind. It contained the advice of an old monk to a penitent, "My son, when in grievous temptation from trouble of the mind, engage violently in some exercise of the body."
He was a swift rider, and there was no need for him to linger longer here. These people were painfully subservient. If at any time anything came into his mind to be done for the little girl, they would readily agree to it; that is, if the small tigress concurred; at present there was nothing to be done for her.
He laid his hand on his bicycle and went towards the house again. There was no one to be seen, so he hurried up to the rickety barn where Claude sat on a milking-stool, trying to keep his long legs out of the way of a frisky cow.