Down to the spring one day I strayed
The cresses fresh to cull."
Twenty lads and as many girls took up the chorus:
"The ducks, the ducks, the ducklings, oh!
To the Marais forth they go!"
And the ronde invaded both rooms. At the same time Félicité Gauvrit, who had refused to take her place in the chain of dancers, drew near the table where Mathurin was sitting. He at once rose, throwing down his cards to the man sitting next him.
"Stay where you are, Mathurin," she exclaimed. "Do not trouble about me. I have come to watch the dancers."
But she drew a chair into a corner of the room, assisted Mathurin to it, and then sat down beside him. Neither spoke. They were sitting in the half shade of a projecting piece of furniture; the cripple was not looking at Félicité, nor she at him. Side by side they sat in the shade of the cherry wood wardrobe, apparently engrossed in watching the dancers as they passed in and out of the room. But what they really saw was something very different; one saw the past love meetings, the plighted troth, the return that night in the waggon, the awful suffering stretching out through years, the desertion—now at this very moment—at an end. The other saw the possible, perhaps, near future; the farmstead of La Fromentière where she would reign; the bench in church where she would sit; the greetings that would be hers from the proudest girls round about; and the husband she would have—André Lumineau—who was now dancing the ronde with the little girl of fifteen, the singer of the couplets.
Mathurin began speaking in a low voice, words broken by long periods of silence; he was very pale and in fear that this brief happiness would too soon come to an end.
Grave and reserved, her hands crossed upon her apron, the daughter of La Seulière spoke without haste words heard by none but themselves. Many eyes were turned upon this strange pair of once betrothed lovers.