— X —
A DAUGHTER OF FRANCE
HOW still the house was! Only once during the night had Marie-Louise heard a sound as she had sat, dressed, by the window in the little attic room. And that sound had been the whir of an automobile rushing by on the road—it had been Jean returning from Marseilles. That was while it was very dark, very long ago—now it was daylight again, and the sun was streaming into the room.
The chaste, sweet face was tired and weary and aged a little; but on the lips, sensitive, delicate, making even more beautiful their contour, was a brave, resolute little smile, as her eyes rested on the small white bed, neatly made, unslept in. It was over now, the fight that had been so hard and so cruel to fight; and she needed only the courage to go on to the end.
Over and over again, all through the night, she had thought it out. She loved Jean. She loved Jean so much! She had trembled once when she had tried to think how much, and the thought had come so quickly, before she could arrest it, that she loved Jean as much as she loved God—and then she had prayed the bon Dieu not to be angry with her for the sin, for she had not meant to think such thoughts as that.
It was true what they had said when they had passed by on the road yesterday evening. There was no place in his new life for her. A hundred little things all
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