is a matter of indifference which
way death comes. But I am in no danger of starving in my old age. I am
even going to lay by something, since I live with my wife's parents and
spend nothing. And then, you see, I shall love you so well that I can
never grow old. They say that when a man is happy he keeps sound, and I
know well that in love for you, I am younger than Bastien; for he does
not love you; he is too stupid, too much of a child to understand how
pretty and how good you are, and how you were made for people to court.
Do not hate me, Marie. I am not a bad man. I made my Catherine happy,
and on her death-bed she swore before God that she had had only
happiness of me, and she asked me to marry again. Her spirit must have
spoken to her child to-night. Did you not hear the words he said? How
his little lips quivered as his eyes stared upward, watching something
that we could not see! He was surely looking at his mother, and it was
she who made him say that he wished you to take her place."

"Germain," answered Marie, amazed and yet thoughtful, "you speak
frankly, and everything that you say is true. I am sure that I should do
well to love you if it did not displease your parents too much. But what
can I do? My heart does not speak for you. I am very fond of you, but
though your age does not make you ugly, it makes me afraid. It seems as
if you were some such relation to me, as an uncle or a godfather, that I
must be respectful toward you, and that there might be moments when you
would treat me like a little girl rather than like your wife and your
equal. And perhaps my friends would make fun of me, and although it
would be silly to give heed to that, I think that I should be a little
sad on my wedding-day."

"Those are but childish reasons, Marie; you speak like a child."

"Yes, that is true; I am a child," said she, "and it is on that account
I am afraid of too sensible a man. You must see that I am too young for
you, since you just found fault with me for speaking foolishly. I can't
have more sense than my age allows."

"O Heavens! How unlucky I am to be so clumsy and to express so ill what
I think!" cried Germain. "Marie, you don't love me. That is the long
and short of it. You find me too simple and too dull. If you loved me
at all, you would not see my faults so clearly. But you do not love me.
That is the whole story."

"That is not my fault," answered she, a little hurt that he was speaking
with less te