he civilized it could not take place, but here she could sing as she
pleased in the middle of the night; it was nobody's affair, nobody's
disturbance. "Saint Ann! Saint Joseph! Saint Mary!" She heard her song
answered! She held her heart, she bent forward, she sang again. Oh,
the air was full of music! It was all music! She fell on her knees;
she listened, looking at the moon; and, with her face in her hands,
looking at Zepherin. It was God's choir of angels, she thought, and
one with a voice like Zepherin! Whenever it died away she would sing
again, and again, and again--

[Illustration: "HER HEART DROVE HER TO THE WINDOW".]

But the sun came, and the sun is not created, like the moon, for
lovers, and whatever happened in the night, there was work to be done
in the day. Adorine worked like one in a trance, her face as radiant
as the upturned face of a saint. They did not know what it was, or
rather they thought it was love. Love is so different out there, they
make all kinds of allowances for it. But, in truth, Adorine was
still hearing her celestial voices or voice. If the cackling of the
chickens, the whir of the spinning-wheel, or the "bum bum" of the loom
effaced it a moment, she had only to go to some still place, round
her hand over her ear, and give the line of a song, and--it was
Zepherin--Zepherin she heard.

She walked in a dream until night. When the moon came up she was at
the window, and still it continued, so faint, so sweet, that answer to
her song. Echo never did anything more exquisite, but she knew nothing
of such a heathen as Echo. Human nature became exhausted. She fell
asleep where she was, in the window, and dreamed as only a bride can
dream of her groom. When she awoke, "Adorine! Adorine!" the beautiful
angel voices called to her; "Zepherin! Zepherin!" she answered, as if
she, too, were an angel, signaling another angel in heaven. It was too
much. She wept, and that broke the charm. She could hear nothing more
after that. All that day was despondency, dejection, tear-bedewed
eyes, and tremulous lips, the commonplace reaction, as all know, of
love exaltation. Adorine's family, Acadian peasants though they were,
knew as much about it as any one else, and all that any one knows
about it is that marriage is the cure-all, and the only cure-all, for
love.

[Illustration: "ALL THAT DAY WAS DESPONDENCY, DEJECTION."]

And Zepherin? A man could better describe his side of that week; for
it, too, has