“God knows I am,” he said with emphasis. “And God knows that never will I do anything else than make love to you, so long as I live. I am really only beginning to love you.”
“What? You dare to tell me that you have been deceiving me all these dozen years?”
“Of course I imagined I loved you. But I was only a boy and I was only beginning to know you. Indeed, I am only beginning to know you now.”
Again she laughed, a happy laugh, the laugh of a carefree light-hearted girl.
“How serious you are, Hugh, old boy! Let us be happy.”
They returned to the verandah and there, while the night came up from behind the distant hills, they sat watching in almost complete silence, needing no words for perfect fellowship, till old Jinny brought in a dirty and very weary boy to say good-night.
CHAPTER V
Hugh Gaspard rose next morning with his mind set upon the accomplishment of his tasks. First he must finish his picture, and then he must get that Indian woman away from the country. Both of these things must be done and done today. Before all else he must finish the picture, because it had gripped him and he could not escape from it, but chiefly because he was somehow conscious of an overmastering eagerness to do what he knew would bring to his wife’s face that look of joy and pride in him which during the last twenty-four hours had become intensely desirable. It was as if he had a foreboding that for him that look might never appear again.
The morning hours his wife spent in bed, hearing Paul’s lessons. Through the open doors of her bedroom and his studio he could hear their voices, the high, clear, eager, questioning voice of the boy and the gentle tones of the mother in reply. Coming into the living room for a fresh supply of tobacco, he heard the boy reciting the Catechism which was always the first lesson in the morning.
“Every sin aserveth God’s wrath and curse, both in this life and that which is acome——”