restored confidence and renewed enthusiasm in all good works,
he seized the opportunity to speak of what was in his heart. "Now you
must listen to me. I believe, I honestly believe, that by His all-wise
and all-knowing ruling I have been sent here to help you and be your
friend. That letter I wrote to you--you received it I know, for I
heard about it. I went West from a sense of duty. I was not required,
and again the sense of duty brought me back to St. Ignace and--you."

"Oh, not only me! You would have come back in any case. You say it
was Duty, not,--not----" Not Desire? If this were thought in some
vague and unapprehended shape, it was not spoken. Ringfield gave her
hand a strong and kindly pressure and let it fall.

"It was duty, yes, duty revealed to me by my Maker, to serve and obey
whom is not only my duty but my whole desire and pleasure."

"You really mean what you say in telling me this? It sounds like
things we read, like the little books they gave us at Sorel-en-haut.
_Mon Dieu_! but those little books! And one big one there was, a
story-book about a girl, all about a girl. A girl called Ellen, Ellen
something, I have forgotten."

"That must have been 'The Wide, Wide World'. And you read that while
you were at school!"

"Yes, when I was a young girl. I am afraid it didn't do me much good."

These interchanges of simple talk marked the progress of their
friendship. Any fact about her past or present life, no matter how
trivial, was of astonishing interest to him. And to her, the knowledge
that she was already and swiftly, passionately, purely dear to a being
of Ringfield's earnest mould and serious mien, so different to the
other man who had come into her life, gave a sense of delicious triumph
and joy. They continued to talk thus, in accents growing momentarily
more tender, of many things connected with her youth and his calling,
and the fact that they kept their voices down so intimately low lent
additional zest and delight to the situation. Only when Ringfield
alluded directly to Edmund Crabbe did she show uneasiness.

"You must give me the right to settle this affair with him," said her
visitor. "We cannot risk such statements being made to people of the
village, to such a man as Poussette, for example."

"Oh--Poussette!" Miss Clairville found it possible and even pleasant
now to laugh. "Do you not know then all about Mr. Poussette? He is in
love with me, too, or so he say