“He can wait till Doomsday,” said Aristide.
“Take off your dripping coat. You must be wet through. Oh, how impulsive you are!”
He took off his overcoat dejectedly and followed her into the parlour, where she tried to point out the impossibility of his scheme. How could she abandon her home at a moment’s notice? Failing to convince him, she said at last in some embarrassment, but with gentle dignity: “Suppose we did run away together in your romantic fashion, would it not confirm the scandal in the eyes of this wretched village?”
“You are right,” said Aristide. “I had not thought of it.”
He knew himself to be a madman. It was not thus that ladies were rescued from calumny. But to leave her alone to face it for time indefinite was unthinkable. And, meanwhile, what would become of him severed from her and little Jean? He sighed and looked around the little room where he had been so happy, and at the sweet-faced woman whose companionship had been so dear to him. And then the true meaning of all the precious things that had been his life for the past two months appeared before him like a smiling valley hitherto hidden and now revealed by dissolving mist. A great gladness gathered round his heart. He leaned across the table by which he was sitting and looked at her and for the first time noticed that her eyes were red.
“You have been crying, dear Anne,” said he, using her name boldly. “Why?”
A man ought not to put a question like that at a woman’s head and bid her stand and deliver. How is she to answer? Anne felt Aristide’s bright eyes upon her and the colour mounted and mounted and deepened on her cheeks and brow.
“I don’t like changes,” she said in a low voice.
Aristide slipped noiselessly to the side of her chair and knelt on one knee and took her hand.
“Anne—my beloved Anne!” said he.