“They are dead, Paul, both of them. They were fighting on the railway track when the Paris train came along. I saw them both quite dead.”
Paul knew at once whom Toni meant. A great wave of gratitude welled up in his heart. He did not, like Toni, drop on his face and weep and fall into a paroxysm of piety, but he felt his release from the sentence of death pronounced against them both, as much as Toni did.
“Then we are saved, Toni, from that knife-thrust in the heart or that blow on the side of the head,” said Paul quietly. “Thank God!”
“I have told Denise,” whispered Toni, “now you go, Paul, and tell Madame.”
Just then a light shone in Lucie’s window. She passed into Paul’s room, and going to the open window, her white figure leaned out.
“I am coming in now, dearest,” called Paul softly, stepping under the window. “I have good news.”
In a little while Toni was plodding back through the park. He meant to be a model husband, the best father that ever lived, if God should give him children, the most worthy, blameless corporal in the French army. He meant to give all his substance to the poor, including Denise’s dowry, to go to church twice a day on week-days and three times on Sundays, and to lead a life which would be a perfect combination of the contemplative and the actively charitable. All of the time that he could spare from his military duties, he meant to give to prayer, and to make Denise pray with him. He intended to fast and to make Denise fast, too. Not St. Elizabeth, queen of Hungary, married to St. Louis, king of France, could have led the life which Toni, in these first moments, promised that he and Denise should lead. Never was there on earth so good a man as Toni meant to be thereafter.
THE END