would support her no longer. She was white, and her
teeth chattered with cold and weakness. Germain took her in his arms to
warm her. The uneasiness, the compassion, the tenderness of movement he
could not repress, took possession of his heart and stilled his senses.
As by a miracle his tongue was loosened, and every feeling of shame
vanished.

"Marie," said he, "I like you, and I am very sorry that you don't like
me. If you would take me for your husband, there are no fathers, nor
family, nor neighbors, nor arguments which could prevent me from giving
myself to you. I know how happy you would make my children, and that you
would teach them to love the memory of their mother, and with a quiet
conscience I could satisfy the wishes of my heart. I have always been
fond of you, and now I love you so well that were you to ask me to
spend all my life in doing your pleasure, I would swear to do it on the
instant. Please think how much I love you, and try to forget my age.
Think that it is a wrong notion to believe that a man of thirty is old.
Besides, I am but twenty-eight. A young girl is afraid that people will
talk about her if she takes a man ten or twelve years older than she,
simply because that is not the custom in our country, but I have heard
say that in other countries people don't look at it in this light, and
that they had rather allow a sensible man of approved courage to support
a young girl, than trust her to a mere boy, who may go astray, and, from
the honest fellow they thought him, turn into a good-for-nothing.
And then years don't always make age. That depends on the health and
strength a person has. When a man is used up by overwork and poverty,
or by a bad life, he is old before twenty-five. While I--but Marie,
you are not listening...." "Yes I am, Germain; I hear you perfectly,"
answered little Marie, "but I am thinking over what my mother used to
tell me so often: that a woman of sixty is to be pitied greatly when
her husband is seventy or seventy-five and can no longer work to support
her. He grows feeble, and it becomes her duty to nurse him at the very
age when she begins to feel great need of care and rest herself, and so
it is that the end comes in a garret."

"Parents do well to say so, I admit," answered Germain, "but then
they would sacrifice all their youth, the best years of their life,
to calculating what will become of them at the age when a person is no
longer good for anything, and when it