resolve outshone all
else and alone was dominant there.

Marie-Louise sat up suddenly from the ground and turned toward him, her
brows gathered in a pretty, puzzled way.

"Why do you look at me like that, Jean?" she demanded abruptly. "And
what are you doing there? It is not the doll you promised to make for
little Ninon Lachance--it is much too big." She leaned forward. "What
are you making?"

"_Ma foi_!" Jean muttered, with a little start--and stared at the lump
of clay. "I--I do not know."

"Well, then," said Marie-Louise gravely, "don't do any more. I want to
talk to you, Jean."

"How, not do any more!" protested Jean whimsically. "Was it not you
who said, 'We will go to the creek this afternoon and make _poupees_'?
And look"--he jerked his hand toward a large basket on the ground
beside him--"to do that I shall perhaps not keep my promise to meet the
_Lucille_ when she comes in and bring a panier of fish to Jacques
Fregeau at the Bas Rhone. And now you say, 'Don't do any more'!"

"Yes; I know," admitted Marie-Louise. "But I want to talk to you.
Listen, Jean. To-morrow Mother Fregeau must go back to the Bas Rhone.
She has been too long away in her kindness now. You know how she came
to me the next morning after Uncle Gaston died, and put her arms around
me and has stayed ever since."

Jean shifted the lump of clay a little away from Marie-Louise, but his
fingers still worked on.

"She has a heart of gold," asserted Jean. "Who should know any better
than I, who have lived with her all these years?"

Marie-Louise's eyes travelled slowly in a half tender, half pensive way
over Jean. His coat was off; the loose shirt was open at the neck
displaying the muscular shoulders, and the sleeves were rolled up over
the brown, tanned arms; the powerful hands, powerful for all their
long, slim, tapering fingers, worked on and on; the black hair
clustered truantly, as it always did, over the broad, high forehead.
She had known Jean all her life, as many years as she could remember,
and her love for him was very deep. It had come to seem her life, that
love; and each night in her prayers she had asked the _bon Dieu_ to
bless and take care of Jean, and to make her a good wife to him when
that time should come. It was so great, that love, that sometimes it
frightened her--somehow it was frightening her now, for there was a
side to Jean that, well as she knew him, she felt intuitively she had
never been abl