Her reticence, her trained reserve, were lost in this passion of long-restrained love. Ah, here was Schmidt's Quaker Juliet!
He drew her to him and kissed her wet cheek. "You will never, never regret," he said. "All else is of no moment. We love each other. That is all now. I have so far never failed in anything, and I shall not now."
He had waited long, he said, and for good reasons. Some day, but not now in an hour of joy, he would tell her the story of his life, a sad one, and of why he had been what men call brutal to Carteaux and why their friend Schmidt, who knew of his love, had urged him to wait. She must trust him yet a little while longer.
"And have I not trusted thee?"
"Yes, Pearl."
"We knew, mother and I, knowing thee as we did, that there must be more cause for that dreadful duel than we could see."
"More? Yes, dear, and more beyond it; but it is all over now. The man I would have killed is going to France."
"Oh, René—killed!"
"Yes, and gladly. The man goes back to France and my skies are clear for love to grow."
He would kill! A strange sense of surprise arose in her mind, and the thought of how little even now she knew of the man she loved and trusted. "I can wait, René," she said, "and oh, I am so glad; but mother—I have never had a secret from her, never."