happiness?'
He looked at her steadily in the eyes, and said: 'Will it make you happy
to go to Garoche?' She raised her hands and wrung them. 'God knows, God
knows, I am his wife,' she said helplessly, 'and he loves me.' 'And God
knows, God knows,' said the Baron, 'it is all a question of whether one
shall feed and two go hungry, or two gather and one have the stubble!
Shall not he stand in the stubble? What has he done to merit you?

"What would he do? You are for the master, not the man; for love, not
the feeding on; for the Manor House and the hunt, not the cottage and
the loom.'

"She broke into tears, her heart thumping in her throat. 'I am for what
the Church did for me this day,' she said. 'O sir, I pray you, forgive
me and let me go. Do not punish me, but forgive me--and let me go. I was
wicked to wear your glove-wicked, wicked.' 'But no,' was his reply, 'I
shall not forgive you so good a deed, and you shall not go. And what
the Church did for you this day she shall undo--by all the saints, she
shall! You came sailing into my heart this hour past on a strong wind,
and you shall not slide out on an ebb-tide. I have you here, as your
Seigneur, but I have you here as a man who will--'

"He sat down by her at that point, and whispered softly in her ear; at
which she gave a cry which had both gladness and pain. 'Surely, even
that,' he said, catching her to his breast. 'And the Baron of Beaugard
never broke his word.' What should be her reply? Does not a woman when
she truly loves always believe? That is the great sign. She slid to
her knees and dropped her head into the hollow of his arm. 'I do not
understand these things,' she said, 'but I know that the other was
death, and this is life. And yet I know, too, for my heart says so, that
the end--the end, will be death.'

"'Tut, tut, my flower, my wild-rose!' he said. 'Of course the end of all
is death, but we will go a-Maying first, come October, and let the world
break over us when it must. We are for Maying now, my rose of all the
world!' It was as if he meant more than he said, as if he saw what would
come in that October which all New France never forgot, when, as he
said, the world broke over them.

"The next morning the Baron called Garoche to him. The man was like some
mad buck harried by the hounds, and he gnashed his teeth behind his shut
lips. The Baron eyed him curiously, yet kindly, too, as well he might,
for when was ever man to hear such a speech as