“Jules. And he bring Melinda to de house.”
“She not come. She not leave her own house. She take her 'usban' in.”
“Then Jules must rent de house. You not detest poor Jules?”
“I not detest him like de hudder one.”
“Au 'voir, Clethera.”
“Au 'voir, Honoré.”
They shook hands, the young man wringing him-self away with the animation of one who goes, the girl standing in the dull anxiety of one who stays. War, so remote that she had heard of it indifferently, rushed suddenly from the tropics over the island.
“Are your clothes all mend' and ready, Honoré?”
But what thought can a young man give to his clothes when about to wrap himself in glory? He is politely tapping at the shed window of the Indian woman, and touching his cap in farewell and gallant capitulation, and with long-limbed sweeping haste, unusual in a quarter-breed, he is gone to the docks, with a bundle under one arm, waving his hand as he passes. All the women and children along the street would turn out to see him go to the war if his intention were known, and even summer idlers about the bazars would look at him with new interest.
Clethera could not imagine the moist and horrid heat of those southern latitudes into which Honoré departed to throw himself. Shifting mists on the lake rim were no vaguer than her conception of her country's mighty undertaking. But she could feel; and the life she had lived to that day was wrenched up by the roots, leaving her as with a bleeding socket.