in her pretty English repeated over and over to
herself:

"My heart is thine, and soul and body render
Faith to thy faith; I give nor hold in thrall:
Take all, dear love! thou art my life's defender;
Speak to my soul! Take life and love; take all!"

She was lifted up by the abandonment of the verse, by the fulness of
her own feelings, which had only needed a touch of beauty to give it
exaltation. The touch had come.

She went on abstractedly to the place where she had trysted with her
thoughts only, these many years, and, sitting down, watched the sun
sink beyond the trees, the shades of evening fall. All that had
happened since Charley came to the parish she went over in her mind.
She remembered the day he had said this, the day he had said that; she
brought back the night--it was etched upon her mind!--when he had said
to her, "You have saved my life, Mademoiselle!" She recalled the time
she put the little cross back on the church-door, the ghostly footsteps
in the church, the light, the lost hood. A shudder ran through her now,
for the mystery of that hood had never been cleared up. But the words on
the page caught her eye again:

"My heart is thine, and soul and body render
Faith to thy faith..."

It swallowed up the moment's agitation. Never till this day, never till
last night, had she dared to say to herself, He loves me. He seemed so
far above her--she never had thought of him as a tailor!--that she had
given and never dared hope to receive, had lived without anticipation
lest there should come despair. Even that day at Vadrome Mountain she
had not thought he meant love, when he had said to her that he would
remember to the last. When he had said that he would die for love's
sake, he had not meant her, but others--some one else whom he would save
by his death. Kathleen, that name which had haunted her--ah, whoever
Kathleen was, or whatever Kathleen had to do with him or his life, she
had no reason to fear Kathleen now. She had no reason to fear any one;
for had she not heard his words of love as he clasped her in his arms
last night? Had she not fled from that enfolding, because her heart was
so full in the hour of her triumph that she could not bear more, could
not look longer into the eyes to which she had told her love before his
was spoken?

In the midst of her thoughts she heard footsteps. She started up.
Paulette Dubois suddenly appeared in the path below. She had take