ce half painful, half joyous.
"I know that it is so. But, oh, dear Monsieur, I cannot marry
you--never--never."

He hung on bravely. "I want to make life easy and happy for you. I want
the right to do so. When trouble comes upon you--"

"When it does I will turn to you--ah, yes, I would turn to you without
fear, dear Monsieur," she said, and her heart ached within her, for a
premonition of sorrow came upon her and filled her eyes, and made her
heart like lead within her breast. "I know how true a gentleman you
are," she added. "I could give you everything but that which is life to
me, which is being, and soul, and the beginning and the end."

The weight of the revealing hour of her life, its wonder, its agony,
its irrevocability, was upon her. It was giving new meanings to
existence-primitive woman, child of nature as she was. All morning she
had longed to go out into the woods and bury herself among the ferns and
bracken, and laugh and weep for very excess of feeling, downright joy
and vague woe possessing her at once. She looked the Seigneur in the
eyes with consuming earnestness.

"Oh, it is not because I am young," she said, in a low voice, "for I am
old--indeed, I am very old. It is because I cannot love you, and never
can love you in the one great way; and I will not marry without love.
My heart is fixed on that. When I marry, it will be when I love a man so
much that I cannot live without him. If he is so poor that each meal
is a miracle, it will make no difference. Oh, can't you see, can't you
feel, what I mean, Monsieur--you who are so wise and learned, and know
the world so well?"

"Wise and learned!" he said, a little roughly, for his voice was husky
with emotion. "'Pon honour, I think I am a fool! A bewildered fool, that
knows no more of woman than my cook knows Sanscrit. Faith, a hundred
times less! For Mary Flynn's got an eye to see, and, without telling,
she knew I had a mind set on you. But Mary Flynn thought more than that,
for she has an idea that you've a mind set on some one, Rosalie. She
thought it might be me."

"A woman is not so easily read as a man," she replied, half smiling, but
with her eyes turned to the street. A few people were gathering in front
of the house--she wondered why.

"There is some one else--that is it, Rosalie. There is some one else.
You shall tell me who it is. You shall--"

He stopped short, for there was a loud knocking at the shop-door, and
the voice of M. Evant