charge alone.
The rambles in the woods were given up, and the girl's heart almost died
within her for longing. She helped poor Margot nurse her children, and
if Marsac came on a generous errand they surrounded her and swarmed
over her. He could have killed them with a good will. She would not go
out on the river nor join the girls in swimming matches nor take part in
dances. Sometimes with Pani she spent mornings in the minister's study,
and read aloud or listened to him while his wife sat sewing.

"You are not easily tempted," said the good wife one day. "It is no
secret that this young trader, M. Marsac, is wild for love of you."

"But I do not like him, how then could I give him love?" and she glanced
out of proud, sincere eyes, while a soft color fluttered in her face.

"No, that could not be," assentingly.

The demon within him that Louis Marsac called love raged and rose to
white heat. If he could even carry her off! But that would be a foolish
thing. She might be rescued, and he would lose the good opinion of many
who gave him a flattering sympathy now.

So the weeks went on. The boats were loaded with provision, some of them
started on their journey. He came one evening and found Jeanne and her
protector sitting in their doorway. Jeanne was light-hearted. She had
heard he was to sail to-morrow.

"I have come to bid my old playmate and friend good-by," and there was a
sweet pathos in his voice that woke a sort of tenderness in the girl's
heart, for it brought back a touch of the old pleasant days before he
had really grown to manhood, when they sat under her oak and listened to
Pani's legendary stories.

"I wish you _bon voyage_, Monsieur."

"Say Louis just once. It will be a bit of music to which I shall sail up
the river."

"Monsieur Louis."

The tone was clear and no warmth penetrated it. He could see her face
distinctly in the moonlight and it was passive in its beauty.

"Thou hast not forgiven me. If I knelt--"

"Nay!" she sprang up and stood at Pani's back. "There is nothing to
kneel for. When you are away I shall strive to forget your insistence--"

"And remember that it sprang from love," he interrupted. "Jeanne, is
your heart of marble that nothing moves it? There are curious stories of
women who have little human warmth in them--who are born of strange
parents."

"Monsieur, that is wrong. Jeanne hath ever been loving and fond from the
time she put her little arms around my neck. She is