When I came in Jean rose firmly to her feet. She looked about her with a proud look like one that would say, “See, all ye people, this is he!”
“Quintin!” she said, and laying her thin fingers on my shoulders, she looked deep into my eyes.
Never did I meet such a look. It seemed to be compound of life and death, of the love earthly and the love eternal.
“Good friends,” she said, calmly turning to them as though she had been the minister and accustomed to speak in the hearing of men, “I have summoned my love hastily. I have somewhat to say to him. Will you leave us alone for ten minutes? I have a word to say in his ear alone. It is not strange, is it, at such a time?”
And she smiled brightly upon them, while I stood dumb and astonished. For I knew not whence the lass, ordinarily so still and fond, had gotten her language. She spoke as one who has long made up his mind, and to whom fit and prepared words come without effort.
When they were gone she sat down on the chair again, and, taking my hand, motioned me to kneel down beside her.
Then she laid her hand to my hair and touched it lightly.
“Quintin,” she said, “you and I have not long to sit sweethearting together. I must say quickly that which I have to say. I am, you will peradventure think, a bold, immodest lass. You remember it was I who courted you, compelled you, followed you, spied on you. But then, you see, I loved you. Now I want to ask you to marry me!”
“Nay,” she said, interrupting my words more with her hand than her voice, “misjudge me not. I am to die—to die soon. It has been revealed to me that I have bartered the life eternal for this. And, since so it is, I desire to drink the sweetness of it to the cup’s bottom. I have made a bargain with God. I have prayed, and I have promised that if He will put it in your heart to wed with me for an hour, I will take with gratitude and thankfulness all that lies waiting over there, beyond the Black River.”
She waved her hand down toward the Dee water.