“You see, I’m dead. They may refuse to let me come to life again. And the official letters that will be written—and the fuss——!”
She laughed with him—glad of this happier mood.
“Why, after all, chéri, it is only a great joke. You have done nobody any harm, and think of how you have helped us in Beaucourt. We shall have good friends here. They, too, will see the joke, this great human adventure. No one will bear you any malice.”
“There is Bibi,” he said.
“What can Bibi do?”
She sent him to bed comforted and utterly in love with her loyalty and her generous common-sense. She was a little woman whose sturdiness helped a man—for most men are little more than big children, and the woman who loves a man is also his mother. Manon refused to utter tragic cries and to dissolve into passionate and romantic misery. Her capable hands pulled the knot to pieces. She had faith in her common-sense.
“We will tell the truth,” she said, “and look happy over it. A smile goes such a long way. If you sneak about looking miserable, the world invents scandals to account for your looks. It may be that you will have to go to England, chéri, but I shall trust you to come back.”
She took the whole affair in hand, for women are more courageous than men. Anatole Durand and Monsieur Lefèbre should be told, but they went first to Monsieur Lefèbre. It was after supper and before dusk when they walked up to the church and found Monsieur Lefèbre repairing the floor of the pulpit. Through the broken west window of the church the sky showed all yellow, and the light was on Manon’s face as she stood by the pulpit steps.
“We have come to confess,” she said, “and to ask for your advice.”
Lefèbre looked at them both—Manon honest and sturdy—Paul a little shy and obscured. He had grown fond of these two, and his sympathies were alarmed.