"Oh, I am glad—I am glad!" she cried; "I could kiss you for your news, Jean-Marie!"
And she did so, her tears dropping on his hands.
"This thing I do not understand!" said the miller to himself, when, no longer a prisoner, he left Claire to sink her brow into a freshly-lavendered pillow in her own chamber.
And he never would know.
Yet Valentine la Niña would have done the same thing. For in their hearts all women wish to be loved "like that."
The word is their own—and the voice in which they say it.
CHAPTER XLI.
"AND LAZARUS CAME FORTH!"
This was all of the most cheerful for John d'Albret. To be loved with wet glad eyes by the woman for whom you have done brave deeds is the joy of life. Only to taste its flavour, she herself must tell you of it. And John d'Albret was very far from the Mas of the Mountain of Barbentane. He did not feel the dry even rush of the high mistral, steady and broad as a great ocean current—yet how many times more swift. The wind that fanned his heated temples was the warm day wind of Africa, coming in stifling puffs as from an oven, causing the dust to whirl, and lifting the frilled leaves of the palms like a woman's garments. At night, on the contrary, the humid valley-winds stealing down from the Canigou made him shiver, as he crouched in the ancient sheepfolds and rude cane-built shelters where he had expected to find Jean-aux-Choux.