gon stopped. Marie heard farewells exchanged, and then on they
jogged again to St. Gertrude.

Marie's heart was suddenly stilled: its painful throbbing and fluttering
had subsided--it sank like lead. Leon was gone, and she had flung away
her only chance of telling him that Nicolas Marais never had been--never
could be--more to her than a friend.

"Oh what a fool I am! I may often see him, but how can I say this? And
just now the way was open!"

When Farmer Roussel stopped the wagon again, and came round to the back
to help Marie out, he found her sobbing bitterly.

"Here we are at St. Gertrude, but--Ma foi! but this is childish, ma
belle," he said kindly, "to go spoiling your pretty eyes because you
feel ill. Courage! you will soon be well if you eat and drink and keep a
light heart." He helped her down tenderly, and shook both her hands in
his before he let her go. "Well," he said as he rolled up on to the
seat, "I wonder I had not asked for a kiss. She is rarely pretty, poor
child!"

Marie stood still just where she had found her mother seated on that
evening which it seemed to the girl had begun all her misery; but till
now through all there had been hope--the hope given by disbelief in
Leon's engagement to Elise Lesage. Now there was the sad, terrible
certainty that Leon believed her false. Marie knew that though she had
never pledged faith, still her eyes had shown Leon feelings which no
other man had seen in them. For a moment she felt nerved to a kind of
desperation: she would go and seek Leon, and tell him the truth that
some one had set on foot this false report of her promise to Nicolas
Marais. She turned again toward the high-road, and then her heart sank.
How could she seek Leon? He did not love her, and if she made this
confession would it not be a tacit owning of love for himself? The
weight at her heart seemed to burden her limbs: she dragged on toward
home wearily and slowly.

The road turns suddenly into St. Gertrude, and takes a breathing-space
at a sharp angle with a breadth of grass, bordered by a clump of nut
trees. Before Marie reached the nut trees she saw Leon Roussel standing
beside them. She stopped, but he had been waiting for her coming: he
came forward to meet her.

When he saw her face he looked grieved, but he spoke very coldly: "I
have been to your cottage to inquire for you"--he raised his hat, but he
made no effort to take her hand--"and then I heard you were expected
home from