She said: "The past is ours, Jack; the present is ours; the future——"
We tried to smile, but our hearts were like lead. Yet we know that the future will also be ours. I know it as I write.
XII.
The letter from St. Gildas, bringing with it a breath of salt air, lay on the table before us. Sweetheart clasped her hands and looked at me.
"I'm in favour of going at once," I said for the third time. Over by the wall were piled my canvases, the result of three months in Faöuet.
The first was a study of Sweetheart under the trees of the ancient orchard in the convent grounds. What trouble I had had with that canvas! I remembered the morning that the old gardener came over and stood behind me as I painted; and when I had replied to his "Good-morning," I recalled the pang his next words gave me:
"I am so sorry, monsieur, but it is forbidden to enter the convent grounds."
My canvas was almost finished, and, as the romancers have it, "my despair was great!" A month's work for nothing—or next to nothing!
Sweetheart rose from her pose on the low bough of the apple tree and came over to my side. "Never mind, Jack; I shall go and ask the Mother Superior about it."
I knew that she would win over the Mother Superior; and when, that evening, she came back radiant, crying, "She is lovely!—she says you may finish the picture, and I think you ought to go and thank her," I put on my cap, and stepping across the street, we rang at the gate.