"On the contrary I know very well...."
"No. You always think of me as a child. But I am twenty, Driot. I know when others are unhappy. You, for instance, are grieving over our François; you miss him even more than father does. If you were to marry, you would forget your sorrow a little. Settled down at La Fromentière, married to a girl you love, your thoughts would no longer be brooding over the past as now."
"And above all," put in André, "there would be a housekeeper here, and little Rousille could marry her faithful swain."
Pressing herself back against the rick with a girlish movement of shoulders, head, and arms, Rousille raised herself and knelt forward the better to reach her pocket. Bending over the aperture hidden amongst the innumerable folds of her dress, she extracted the letter and gently held up the square of paper to her brother, raising it to the level of her head and following it with her eyes as she did so.
"I would show it to no one but you, André ... read my letter ... I want to prove that I have confidence in you. And then you will understand how light it makes one's heart to receive such a dear letter, so light that one feels like air. It will make you want to receive such an one yourself."
André took the letter without showing the slightest impatience, and without a word of thanks. But as he read, he grew moved, not with jealousy of such love, but with pity for the girl, who was dreaming her dream of happiness between two misfortunes.
For he had definitely decided to leave the farmstead and La Vendée. Some tidings, in a measure foreseen, dreaded for some time past, very serious for La Fromentière, had caused him to come to a decision that very afternoon. He had returned home, sorrow stricken, weighing all the pain he was about to cause; and now coming upon this joy, this hope of Rousille's, those eyes that persisted in smiling at life, that flower of the ruined farmstead, the feeling came over him that he must spare the child, at least, that one evening, and not tell her at once all he knew.
Having read the letter he slowly folded it, and gave it back to Rousille, who, impatient for an appreciative comment, her whole soul in her eyes, her lips breaking into a smile, asked:
"Do you think that father would consent, if you were to marry, and if you spoke for my Jean?"
"Would you go to live in the Bocage, Rousille?"