account of general good and comfort; her oval
face and dark hair and eyes having a certain freshness of creation.
Maria looked at her and wondered what love and sorrow would do to her.

Angelique had one exquisite characteristic which Maria did not at first
notice, but it grew upon her during these quiet half-hours when she was
spared the effort of talking or listening. It was a fixed look of
penetrating sweetness, projecting the girl herself into your nature, and
making her one with you. No intrusive quality of a stare spoiled it. She
merely became you for the time being; and this unconscious pretty trick
had brought down many a long Kaskaskian, for it drove directly through
the hearts of men.

The provincial girl sometimes puzzled herself about the method of
education abroad which had produced such a repressed yet such an
appealing creature as Maria Jones. When she talked to the triangular
little face on the pillow, she talked about the outdoor world rather
than its people; so that after Angelique went away Maria often fell
asleep, fancying herself on the grass, or lying beside the rivers or
under the cool shadows of rocks.

As Rice Jones entered the house, after his talk about Angelique with
young Pierre Menard, he met her coming out. It was the first time that
her twilight visits to his sister had brought them face to face, and
Rice directly turned off through the garden with her, inquiring how
Maria had borne the noise of the day.

"She is very quiet," said Angelique. "She was indeed falling asleep when
I came out."

"I sent my man at noon and at three o'clock to bring me word of her."

There was still a great trampling of horses in the streets. Shouts of
departing happy voters sounded from the Okaw bridge, mixing with the
songs of river men. The primrose lights of many candles began to bloom
all over Kaskaskia. Rice parted the double hedge of currant bushes which
divided his father's garden from Saucier's, and followed Angelique upon
her own gravel walk, holding her by his sauntering. They could smell the
secluded mould in the shadow of the currant roots, which dew was just
reaching. She went to a corner where a thicket of roses grew. She had
taken a handful of them to Maria, and now gathered a fresh handful for
herself, reaching in deftly with mitted arms, holding her gown between
her knees to keep it back from the briers. Some of them were wild roses,
with a thin layer of petals and effulgent yellow centr