“Grand Dieu! Sauvez le Roi!Grand Dieu! Sauvez le Roi!Sauvez le Roi!Que toujours glorieux,Louis Victorieux,Voye ses ennemisToujours soumis.”
“Grand Dieu! Sauvez le Roi!Grand Dieu! Sauvez le Roi!Sauvez le Roi!Que toujours glorieux,Louis Victorieux,Voye ses ennemisToujours soumis.”
“Grand Dieu! Sauvez le Roi!
Grand Dieu! Sauvez le Roi!
Sauvez le Roi!
Que toujours glorieux,
Louis Victorieux,
Voye ses ennemis
Toujours soumis.”
As the light baritone voice died on the still air, Nancy looked down at him with a smile.
“France scores, this time,” she said. “But what a text for an international alliance! Here we are, three nations sitting under the eaves of the most famous citadel in America, and each claiming as his very own the same national anthem.”
“Oh; but it is generally admitted to belong to us,” Barth added, with unflinching persistence.
The next night, Churchill and the doctor were left alone for a few moments. The doctor held out his hand with a smile.
“Nancy tells me you are open to congratulation, Joe.”
“Yes. That is what brought me up here. I am too fond of you both to be willing to take your congratulations in ink. She is a wonderful girl, Uncle Ross.” The happiness of the young American sat well upon him. In his uncle’s eyes, he gained dignity, even as he spoke those few words. Then he laughed. “You may find yourself in the face of a similar situation,” he suggested.
“What do you mean?”
“Nancy.”
The doctor stared at him for a moment.
“Oh, not a bit! Not a bit!” he said then. “Every lover is looking for love. Nancy is nothing but a little girl.”
Churchill smiled.
“Then look out for your little girl. You may lose her, some day.”
“No,” the doctor protested valiantly. “The Lady will see to that. They are nice boys, good boys; but they are only children.”
“Don’t be too sure. If I know anything at all about such matters—”
“You don’t,” the doctor interrupted testily. “But go on! Go on!”
“Then St. Jacques is very much in love with Nancy; and, what is more, that snip of an Englishman is in love with her, too.”
“Hh! And what about Brock?” growled the doctor.
Churchill thrust his hands into his pockets and smiled back into the frowning face of his uncle.
“That’s where you have me,” he answered coolly. “I have been watching the two of them, all day long, and I’ll be sanctified if I can tell you now.”
Four days after Churchill took his departure from Quebec and its Maple Leaf, Brock came striding into the dining-room, his head erect, his gray eyes shining.
“Miss Howard, you are going for a walk, this afternoon,” he said, as he drew back his chair.
“How do you know?”
“Because I am counting on you. Have you anything else to do?”
“I was going to the library,” she suggested. “The new magazines are just in.”
“Let them wait,” he said coolly. “It is too fine a day to be wasted over a fire and a book. I’ll not only show you a new picture; but I promise to tell you a better story than any that ever was written into a magazine.”
Nancy looked up into his happy eyes.
“Then the week is over?” she questioned.
“At last.”
She laughed at his accent of relief.
“How impatient you were! Your secret must have preyed upon you.”
“Not so bad as that,” he began; but she interrupted him mockingly.
“And how many people have you been telling, in the meantime?”
“Not one.”
“Truthfully?”
“Yes. I wanted to tell you, first of all.”
She smiled back at him fearlessly.
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“And will you go?”
“Of course,” she answered heartily. “Did a woman ever refuse to listen to a secret?”
An hour later, she joined him in the hall. Brock stared at her approvingly. Her dark green cloth gown was the work of a tailor of sorts; the plumes of her wide hat made an admirable setting for her halo of ruddy hair. And Nancy returned the approval in full measure. Few men were better to look upon than was Reginald Brock, tall and supple, his well-set head thatched with crisp brown hair and lighted with those merry, clear gray eyes. No sinister thought had ever left its line on Brock’s honest, manly face.
“Come, then,” he said, as he opened the door. “You are in my hands, this afternoon.”
He led the way to the Lower Town. Then, leaving Notre Dame des Victoires far behind them, they passed the custom house, crossed to the Louise Embankment and, rounding the angle by the immigration sheds, came out on the end of the Commissioners’ Wharf.
“There!” Brock said triumphantly. “What do you think of this?”
Nancy drew a long breath of sheer delight.
“One can’t think; one can only feel,” she said slowly.
The river, lying deep blue in the yellow sunlight, slid past their very feet, its glittering wavelets crossed and recrossed with silvery reflections caught from the sky above. Far down its course, the dark indigo Laurentides seemed jutting out into the stream that washed their feet. Above was the Citadel, a crown of gray upon its purplish cliff. Behind them, the noise of the city lost itself in the murmur of the hurrying tide. Close at hand, a network of cables was lowering freight into the hold of an ocean-going steamer; and, out in the middle of the stream, a clumsy craft, loaded to the water’s edge, crawled sluggishly upward against current and tide, ready for the morrow’s market.
Brock pointed to an unused anchor, close to the edge of the embankment.
“Shall we sit down?” he asked.
Nancy took her place in silence. Silently he dropped down beside her. It was a long time before the stillness was broken, save by the lapping of the river at their feet and the hoarse cries of the men in the steamer’s hold. For the moment, they were as isolated as if they had been in some remote desert, rather than upon the edge of one of the busiest spots of the entire city.
Brock’s impatience appeared to have left him. With his gaze on the river, he was whistling almost inaudibly to himself; but it was plain to Nancy, as she watched him, that his thoughts were altogether pleasant ones. So were her own, for the matter of that. The past month had been a happy one to her, and Brock had caused some of its happiest memories. She had trusted him completely, and she had never known him to fail her. His chivalry, his courtesy, his brother-like care had been for her, from the hour of their meeting. She could still recall the glad look in his eyes, as they had rested upon her when he entered the dining-room, that first night. From that hour onward, Nancy Howard and Reginald Brock had been sure, each of the other’s friendship.
“What about it?” Brock asked, as he suddenly turned to face her.
“About what?”
“The subject of your thoughts.”
“All good things,” she answered unhesitatingly. “I was thinking about you, just then.”
“And wishing me good?”
“All good, even as you have been good to me,” she responded, with quiet dignity.
He smiled.
“Nothing to count. But now for the picture.”
“It is beautiful beyond words.”
He smiled again.
“Wait. You haven’t seen it yet.”
With a quick motion of his hand, he drew his watch from his pocket, opened the case and held it out to Nancy. There was no cloud of reservation in the girl’s happy eyes, as she looked at the picture within.
“Mr. Brock!”
“Yes?”
His accent was full of happy question. Downright and prompt came Nancy’s answer.
“She is adorable.”
Gently he took the watch from her hand and looked steadily at the picture, a picture of a round girlish face set as proudly as Brock’s own upon its shapely shoulders.
“Yes,” he assented slowly. “Better than that, she is good.”
There was no mistaking the gladness in Nancy’s tone, as she responded,—
“I think I was never more delighted in all my life. You were good to tell me, first of all.”
“I wanted to,” Brock replied, with boyish eagerness. “We’ve been such good chums, all this last month, that I was sure you would be interested. I want you to meet her. We weren’t going to announce it just yet; but I coaxed her to hurry it up a little, so I could bring her to call on you, before you go home.”
Nancy still held the picture in her hand.
“Is she really as pretty as this?” she asked.
“Why,—yes, I suppose so. I used to think so. Lately, I haven’t thought much about her looks, one way or the other,” he confessed. “She always seems to me about right, and she knows things, too. Really, Miss Howard,” as he spoke, he faced Nancy, with his eyes shining; “really, I’m in great luck. It isn’t every day that a girl of her sort falls in love with a fellow like me.”
There was no hint of coquetry in Nancy’s manner. With a frankness his own sister might have shown, she held out her hand in token of congratulation.
“I am not so sure of that,” she answered, with a smile.
Then the pause lengthened. Brock’s thoughts were far afield; Nancy’s were fixed upon the man at her side. In all sincerity, she did rejoice at his unexpected tidings. No sentimental regrets entered into her perfect content. Her friendship for Brock had been friendship pure and simple; on neither side had it ever been mingled with a thought of love. From chance playmates of an October holiday, they had grown into a loyal liking which was to outlast many a dividing year and mile. And Brock deserved all good things, even the love of this dainty bit of girlhood whose eyes smiled bravely back into her own.
“Tell me all about it,” she said at last.
Brock roused himself from his reverie.
“There’s not so much to tell. I’ve known her always; we’ve always been good friends, but, last summer at Cacouna, it was—different.”
Nancy smiled at the pause which added explanatory force to the last word.
“And was it then?”
“No; not till two or three weeks ago. You see, it took me a good while to get to where I dared speak about it.”
“And when—?”
Brock looked up suddenly.
“I don’t dare think of that yet, Miss Howard,” he answered a bit unsteadily. “The present is so perfect that I am afraid to tempt Fate by asking anything more of the future. For the present, I am like the river out there,” he pointed to the shining stream before him; “just drifting along in the sunshine.”
And the sunshine found an answering light in Nancy’s eyes, as, accepting his offered hand, she slowly rose to her feet and turned her face towards home.
The clouds hung gray and low over the old gray city. From the river the wind swept in, raw and cutting, and the Laurentides lay in the purple haze which betokens a coming storm. The terrace was deserted; the fountain in the Ring had stopped playing, and narrow Sainte Anne Street was turned into a tunnel thick with flying dust. Indian summer was at an end, and winter was at hand.
With her ruddy hair flying and her broad hat tilted rakishly over one ear, Nancy came fighting her way down Saint Louis Street and across the Place d’Armes. Her pulses were pounding gayly with the intoxication of the cold; her face glowed with the struggle of meeting the boisterous wind. From his ducal casement, Barth eyed her wishfully. Then he returned to his book. Nancy, in such a mood as that, defied his powers of comprehension. Upon one former occasion he had seen her thus, a veritable spirit of the storm. Experience had taught him certain lessons. Mr. Cecil Barth looked down on Nancy’s erect head and blazing cheeks, on her vigorous, elastic tread. Looking, he sighed, and prudently remained hidden in his room.
Ten minutes later, Nancy’s shut hand descended upon her father’s door. The door was locked.
“Oh, daddy, are you there?” she called ingratiatingly.
There was no reply, and she tapped again. This time, the doctor answered.
“Busy, Nancy.”
“Really and truly?” she wheedled.
“Yes.”
“Oh, how mean of you! How long?”
“I can’t tell.”
Her lips to the keyhole, she heaved an ostentatious sigh. The sigh brought forth no sign of relenting.
“I am very lonesome, daddy,” she said then. “It is too bad of you to neglect me like this. But, if you really won’t let me in, I’m going out on the ramparts for a breath of fresh air.”
“Well,” the doctor’s accent bespoke his manifest relief. “Go on, dear; but don’t get blown away.”
“No; and don’t you fall asleep over your horrid old manuscripts, and forget to let yourself out and come down to supper,” she cautioned him. “Good by.”
Going back to her room, she took off her jacket and broad hat, and replaced them with a sealskin coat and toque. Then she went running down the stairs and turned out into Sainte Anne Street, already powdered thickly with falling flakes.
With the coming of the snow, the wind was dying, and Nancy made her way easily enough around the corner into Buade Street, past the Chien d’Or, gnawing his perennial bone high in the air, and out to the northeast corner of the city wall where she halted, breathless, beside one of the venerable guns.
Just then, the door of the doctor’s room opened, and Adolphe St. Jacques stepped out into the hall.
“Courage, boy!” said the doctor kindly.
And St. Jacques nodded in silence, as he gripped the outstretched hand.
As a matter of course, he took his way straight in the direction of the ramparts. St. Jacques could think of but one person in the world, just then; and that person was Nancy Howard. He overtook her at the angle of the ancient wall. Later, it occurred to him that there was a symbolic meaning in the situation, as he came hurrying onward, with Laval at his left, Nancy at his right, and the brief, empty stretch of road before him. At the time, however, he had but one thought, and that was to get to Nancy.
He found her standing with her back towards the direction from whence he came. One arm lay lightly across the cannon, the other rested on the old gray parapet which made a fitting background for her slight figure in its dark cloth skirt and dark fur coat. Her shoulders were sprinkled with the fine, soft snow and, against the snowy air above the river, her vivid hair, loosened by the wind, stood out in a gleaming aureole above the high collar of her coat.
“Miss Howard!”
She turned with a start to find St. Jacques at her side. Releasing the cannon, she held out her hand in blithe greeting.
“Isn’t this superb?” she exclaimed breathlessly. “I am so glad you have come to enjoy it with me. See how the river is all blown into a chopping sea! And the snow over Lévis! And look at those thick clouds of snow that keep scurrying across the river! How can people stay in-doors and lose it all?”
For an instant, St. Jacques felt himself dazzled by her beauty and by her strong vitality. In all his past experience, there had been no other Nancy. He sought to get a firm grasp upon himself. The instant’s delay caught Nancy’s quick attention, and she shrank from him, as she saw his rigid face and lambent eyes. Then she rallied and laughed lightly.
“What is it, M. St. Jacques?” she queried. “You look as if you had seen a ghost.”
“So I have.”
“Was it a pretty one?” she asked nervously, as she locked her hands above the crowned monogram on the gun, and stood looking at him a little defiantly.
He shook his head.
“It was the ghost of what I might have been,” he answered quietly.
Again Nancy sought to dominate the scene.
“So bad as that?” she asked, with a futile attempt at flippancy.
He disregarded her words.
“Miss Howard,” he said slowly; “I have come to say good by.”
Instantly her tone changed.
“Oh, I am so sorry! Is it for a long time?”
“I may not come back while you are here.”
It was plain that he was struggling hard to hold himself steady; and Nancy, at a loss to explain the situation, nevertheless found herself sharing his mood.
“I am sorry,” she repeated slowly. “Are you going to leave Quebec?”
“I am going home.”
“There is no trouble there, I hope.”
“No. The trouble is all here.”
Nancy’s mind went swiftly southward to the frisky, boyish days that unfold themselves at Yale.
“At Laval?” she questioned, with a smile.
St. Jacques shook his head.
“What should be the trouble at Laval?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing; unless you have come into collision with a dean or two,” she answered hastily.
St. Jacques smiled, with a pitiful attempt at mirth.
“No. On the other hand, something came into collision with me.”
“What was that?”
For his only answer, he brushed aside his hair and let the storm sweep pitilessly against the scar beneath. Nancy caught her breath sharply.
“M. St. Jacques! Do you mean that it is going to be serious?”
“So serious that I must give up all work.”
“Who says so?” she demanded.
“Your father.”
“My father?” Nancy’s accent dropped to utter hopelessness. “For how long?”
“Until I am better.”
“And when will that be?”
“He says it is impossible for him to tell. Perhaps—”
“Perhaps?” Nancy echoed questioningly.
“Perhaps—never.”
There was no answer for a moment. Then Nancy’s glove tore itself across with the strain of her clenched fingers.
“Oh, I could kill the man who struck that blow!” she burst out. Then her head went down on the crowned monogram, and the silence dropped again.
At length, Nancy raised her head.
“Shall we walk on?” she asked, as steadily as she could. “It is very cold here, all at once.”
Side by side, they turned the corner to the westward, and came into comparative shelter.
“How long have you known it?” she said, as soon as she could speak quietly.
“Just as you came to the door of your father’s room.”
She drew a slow breath, as she looked up at his face, white, but resolute still.
“And already it seems ages old. You are sure?”
“He is. It has been coming on for a month now. Three weeks ago, I went to your father and told him that I feared there was trouble. He bade me wait, to live out of doors and to work as little as possible. I kept the hope. My profession means so much to me now, that I could not give it up.”
“Yes, I know. Your profession is your very life,” Nancy answered gently.
Swiftly he turned and faced her. In that one glance, Nancy saw all the fiery, repressed nature of the man, read his secret and, with a sinking heart, acknowledged to herself the fatal keenness of the blow which she must one day in honor deal.
But the answer of St. Jacques was already in her ears.
“It means far more than life.”
She tried to stem the tide of his words.
“When do you go?” she asked hurriedly.
“To-morrow.”
“So soon as that?”
“There must be an operation.”
“Where?”
“At my home. Your father will go with me. Every one says no greater man can be found. He is very good,” St. Jacques added simply.
Again Nancy’s courage failed her. Again she looked into her companion’s face, and took heart from the resolution written there.
“I wish I knew what to say,” she said quietly.
“Sometimes there is nothing to say. It is all said for us,” he replied, with sudden dreariness. “Meanwhile, may I ask a favor of you?”
“Of course.”
“You have your little Sainte Anne?”
For her only answer, she took it from the folds of her blouse and laid it in his hand. He walked on for a moment, looking down at it with loving, reverent eyes. Then he gave it back into her keeping.
“I had hoped so much from it,” he said slowly; “so much more than you ever knew. I regarded the name as an omen of good. I even made my novena; but it was all in vain.” His voice dropped. “All in vain.” Then he steadied himself. “But the favor? It is to be next Thursday, three days from now. The operation, I mean. On that day, will you go out to the shrine of the Good Sainte Anne, and say a prayer for me? You are no Catholic, I know; but it will help me to be brave, if I can feel that together you and she are making intercession in my behalf.”
Resolutely Nancy brushed the tears from her cheeks and faced him with a smile.
“I—promise,” she said. Then her voice failed her again.
“Thank you. It will be a help. Beyond that, I ask nothing of you. In the one case, it could do no good. In the other, I shall come back to you. There is no need to tell you all I have wished—and hoped—and prayed for, all you have been in my life, these past weeks. If the Good Sainte Anne wills it, I shall tell it all to you, some day. If not—good by.”
As he took her hand into his strong fingers, Nancy’s tear-dim eyes were blind to everything but the unspoken love and longing in the great dark eyes before her, everything but the point of the lower lip rolling outward in its pitiful attempt to form its own brave, characteristic little smile.
Then, hat in hand and the snow sifting down on his thick dark hair, he turned away and left her alone beside the old gray wall in the fast-gathering snow.
Five days later, the doctor came back from Rimouski. Nancy, on the platform of the station, waited eagerly until he came in sight. Then she stepped back and hid her face.
“It was all so like his life,” her father said, when they sat together in his room, that night; “brave and quiet and full of thought for us all. Once he rallied for a few hours, and we felt there was hope. At the very last, he gave me this for you. He said you would understand.” And the doctor laid in Nancy’s palm a tiny figure of the Good Sainte Anne, the exact duplicate of her own, save that its silver base bore the arms of St. Jacques and, beneath, two plain initials:NandH.
A week later, Nancy rose from her knees beside her father’s open trunk, and stood staring down into the courtyard. Wrapped to his ears, the old habitant still sat on his block in the corner, peeling potatoes without end. Far above his head, a stray shaft of sunshine gilded the gray wall and reminded Nancy of her resolution to take a final walk, that morning.
It was almost with a feeling of relief that Nancy saw the approaching end of her stay at The Maple Leaf. The past days had held some of the saddest hours she had ever known. Till then, she had never realized how the bright, brave personality of the sturdy little Frenchman had pervaded the place, how acutely she could mourn for a man of whom, less than six weeks before, she had never even heard. Forget him she could not. She and Brock talked of him by the hour, now laughing over the merry days they had spent together, then giving up to the sudden wave of loneliness which swept over them at the thought of thenevermorethat separated them from their good comrade. As yet, it was too soon for them to take comfort from the doctor’s words, that the swift passing of Adolphe St. Jacques had been but the merciful forestalling of a pitiful, lingering death in life.
To one day, Nancy never made any allusion. That was the day she had spent alone, at the shrine of the Good Sainte Anne.
Now, as she stood before her mirror, fastening on her hat, her glance fell to the little figure of the good saint and, taking it up, she looked long at the symbols graven on its base. She hesitated. Then she gently slid it into the breast pocket of her coat. In loyalty to St. Jacques, it still should be her companion. His eyes now, in the clearer light, could see what had before been hidden from them. Adolphe St. Jacques was too unselfishly loyal to fail to understand the nature of the only love she could ever have given him and, understanding, to reject it.
Inside the city wall, the early snow had vanished; but it still lay white over the Cove Fields, over the ruins of the old French fortifications, and over the plains beyond. Beyond Saint Sauveur, the hills were blue in the sunshine, and the light wind that swept in from their snowy caps, was crisp and full of ozone. Nancy had left The Maple Leaf with slow step and drooping head; she went tramping along the Grand Allée as if the world were all before her, to be had for the mere sake of asking. Then, as she turned again and halted by the Wolfe monument, her buoyant mood forsook her. That simple shaft marked the end of one who died, victorious. It spoke no word of those others, Frenchmen, brave, true-hearted fellows who fell there in their hour of defeat. And not one of them was braver, more true-hearted than little Adolphe St. Jacques.
“Oh, Miss Howard.”
Impatiently she raised her head from the cold iron palings. Barth was standing close at her side. Even as she nodded to him, she felt a sudden shrinking from his inevitable question as to the cause for her tears. To her surprise, no question came.
“After all, he was a wonderfully good little fellow,” Barth said simply.
She nodded, without speaking. Barth let full five minutes pass, before he spoke again.
“I saw you go by the house,” he said then. “I fancied you would come out here. I knew you liked the place.”
“Yes.”
“And so I followed you. I wanted to see you, if I could. Miss Howard, I shall miss you.”
“I am glad of that. It would be dreary to feel that no one mourned for our departure.”
“Oh, yes,” Barth agreed. “Shall we go on for a little walk?”
With one last look at the shaft and its deathless words, Nancy turned and followed him back to the Grand Allée, back from the place of the dead to the haunts of the living.
“Do you go, to-morrow?” Barth asked, after another pause.
“To-morrow noon.”
“It is going to be very lonely,” he said.
“I am glad,” she repeated.
Even to Barth’s conservative mind, the conversation did not appear to be making much progress. He turned and peered into Nancy’s thoughtful face.
“Oh, Miss Howard, would you be willing to give me your address?” he asked abruptly.
“Of course, if you wish it,” she assented cordially.
“Rather! I might call on you, you know, if I ever went to The States.”
“That would be delightful. So you think you will come across the border?”
“Perhaps. I have often wondered, just lately, you know, what I would think of The States. What do you think?”
“That I love them,” Nancy said loyally.
“Oh, yes. But what do you think that I would think?”
Nancy laughed outright, as she met his anxious eyes.
“That it is never safe to predict. I advise you to come and see for yourself.”
Barth’s face cleared.
“Thank you, you know. And the address?”
“I haven’t any cards here.”
“Oh, but I have.” And Barth hastily took out his cardcase. Then, with infinite difficulty, he focussed upon a card the tip of the little gold pencil that dangled from his watchchain.
Nancy dictated the address. Then she laughed.
“The idea of tying your pencil to you!” she commented irreverently.
“Why not? Then one doesn’t lose it, you know.”
“Yes, I do know. It reminds me of the way I used to have my mittens sewed to the ends of a piece of braid,” Nancy responded.
Barth looked up from his half-written card.
“Really? How interesting! But, Miss Howard—” He halted abruptly.
“What now?”
“About The States. You feel they are the only place to live in?”
“Certainly,” Nancy replied promptly.
“Oh. Have you ever been to England?”
“No.” Nancy began to wonder at the antiquity of British customs. At this rate of progress, it would take aeons for a Britisher to evolve a custom of any sort. Already her mind had outstripped the deliberate mental processes of Barth. She also began to wonder impatiently how long it would take him to come to the point. There seemed to her something inhuman in allowing him to remain on the rack of suspense. Nevertheless, she felt that it would be altogether unseemly for her to refuse anything before she was asked.
“Don’t you want to go to England?” Barth continued calmly.
“Yes, of course. I want to visit it. However, that doesn’t mean that I wish to take up my abode there.”
“Oh. I am sorry. Still,” Barth went on meditatively; “I dare say one could make out very well, even if he had to live in The States.”
“I certainly expect to,” Nancy responded coolly.
Again he peered into her face.
“Oh; but I don’t refer to you,” he said hastily. “I was speaking of myself.”
“But I thought you were going out to a ranch.”
“That was before I met you,” Barth answered, with quiet directness.
Suddenly a change came over him. Throwing back his shoulders, he faced Nancy with a resolution which brought new lustre to his eyes, new lines of character into his boyish face. And Nancy, as she saw the change in him, trembled for the decision which, with infinite difficulty, she had long been fixing in her girlish mind.
“Miss Howard,” he asked abruptly; “do you believe in the Good Sainte Anne?”
Without speaking, Nancy let her hand rest lightly on the little silver image in the pocket of her coat. Then she nodded in silence.
“So do I,” Barth answered. “I am not a Catholic; still, I believe that the good lady has had me in her keeping, and I trust she may continue her care for me. Miss Howard, I am English; you are American, very American indeed. However, different as we are, I think our lives need each other. I had never thought,” he hesitated; then, cap in hand, he stood looking directly into her blushing face; “I had never supposed that my life could hold a love like what has grown into it. I dare not face that life without—Miss Howard,” he added, with a swift change to the simple boyishness which became him so well; “my life is all yours, to do what you like with. I shall try to meet your decision bravely; but I do hope you won’t throw me to one side, as of no use.”
But Nancy walked on without answering; and Barth, still cap in hand, moved on at her side.
“It began a long while ago,” he added at length. “I really think it must have started, that day at the shrine of Sainte Anne.”
Again Nancy’s hand caressed the little image in her pocket.
“I think perhaps it did,” she assented.
For a moment, Barth walked on in silence, unable to construe her words into the phrase which he was waiting to hear. Then he spoke again.
“I went out to Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré, one morning last week,” he said slowly. “It was very desolate there, at this season. I walked out on the pier. Then I went back and sat in the church for quite a long time, and I thought about things. Miss Howard, I wish I had never given you that guinea.”
With an odd little laugh, which was yet half a sob, Nancy put her hand into her pocket, felt about underneath the little silver image, and slowly drew out a shining bit of gold.
“Here it is, Mr. Barth,” she said. “Take it back, if you wish it.”
Taking it from her outstretched hand, he stared at it intently for a moment. Then he held it out to her again.
“And you have carried it, all this time?”
“No,” she confessed reluctantly. “Only lately.”
“Oh, but—”
“I have called it my lucky penny,” she interrupted, with a smile. “I had never supposed you would regret giving it to me.”
Still with the coin in the hollow of his hand, he put on his glasses and peered into her face. He read there something which he had missed in her tone. Dropping his glasses again, he held out the shining golden guinea.
“Please take it back again,” he said, and in his voice there came a sudden imperious accent which was new to Nancy. “And, when you take it, take me, too. We both are yours, you know.”
The girl moved steadily on for a step or two, her eyes fixed upon the strip of path before her. Then her step lagged a little and, turning, she smiled up into Barth’s troubled, waiting eyes, while she held out her hand for the coin.
“Give it back to me, then,” she said quietly. “It is mine.”
“With all it must mean,—Nancy?”
“Yes. With all it does mean.”
Their hands met about the shining piece of gold, and it was an instant before they dropped apart again. Then Barth gave a contented little sigh.
“And now,” he said slowly; “now at last I really can call you my Good Sainte Anne. Oh, rather!”
Obvious printing errors have been silently corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation, spelling and punctuation have been preserved.