'That is well,' thought the old woman, her hostess, regarding her. 'Those who love the country have clean souls.'
She had not asked or wished to ask any questions concerning her guest.
In her eyes Othmar could do no wrong, and to her gratitude his will was law. But she had kept her own soul clean all her days, dwelling here always in these same green peaceful places; and as she looked on the face of Damaris she was glad, for she saw there three things which are as beautiful as flowers—innocence, and youth, and ignorance of all fear and guile.
Damaris slept very soundly that night in a little white room that smelt of lavender and pressed rose-leaves, and when she awoke in the morning heard the pleasant sound of mowing scythes, of rippling water, of a thrush's singing in a blossoming elder bough; and all the young life in her seemed to arise and grow anew, and become once more as glad to greet the sun as any bird which wakes at dawn as the first white light gleams through its house of leaves.
Many quiet and almost happy summer days followed for her, in which she recovered all her normal strength. The ways and the work of the farm were familiar and welcome to her, and she scarcely waited to be well before taking to herself a share of its labours.
The widow Chabot asked her no questions, but she, having no secrets, soon related the few incidents of her short existence, and heard in return the narrative of Othmar's actions during the Commune. Taciturn by temperament, and grave and reserved by habit as the old woman was, she grew eloquent whenever she spoke of the saviour of the last of her race, and Damaris, when the day's work was done, and they sat together in the rose-coloured porch while the spinning-wheels flew round, never wearied of hearing that tale, and said in her own heart as she listened, 'How good he is!—how good!'
These summer weeks in Chevreuse were full of rest and solace to her. It was but a pause, a halt before the heat and stress of life, she knew; an 'étape' such as she had seen the dust-covered conscripts on the march enjoy, resting by the wayside under the trees, where some little water-spring bubbled up amongst the cistus bushes and the euphorbia of a Riviera road. But she was at peace in it, and, childlike, hardly thought of the morrow.
Sometimes she looked far away, when the sun rose, to the east where Paris was, and wondered if ever there the world would hear of her, know her, care for her. But it was all vague. Her future was bathed in golden light, like the green landscape when the sun came out from the mists of dawn; but it had no distinctness to her, no definite shape or end. It was mere radiant nebulæ, like the rosy and amber-tinted clouds which the peasants looking eastward said was Paris, though no roof, or dome, or spire was visible when the morning broke.
Othmar came to see her rarely, and his visits were brief; but as she had no vanity and had much gratitude, she was wholly content with such slight remembrance. He sent her many books and other things which amused her, and her mind was eager for all kinds of knowledge. She had great natural intelligence and quickness of perception, and she read the fine prose and the stately alexandrines of the old French authors with avidity and delight. Something of the intellectual life of Port Royal seemed to her fancy still to linger in the air, and make classic all the rustic paths of this quiet valley.