She looked long into his upturned face. The wistfulness sat heavy upon
it. The youthfulness of this dashing trapper of the posts and
settlements came out plain in the starlight. She saw again the pliant
strength beneath the slender grace, caught the suggestion of
contradicting forces that she had felt one day in Marie's doorway when
young Dupre swung up the main way of Fort de Seviere, and beneath it
all she saw that which had caused her to say on that first morning of
the long trail when he faced her in the hidden cove, "Would it had been
given me to love you, M'sieu!"
All this passed through her aching heart, and presently she said with a
little catch in her deep voice,
"What awaits a man like this? A man who has done all these things and
who speaks of their folly, who thinks of God in the nighttimes, whose
heart turns with longing to that land behind the stars, and who
gives,"--she paused a moment,--"I cannot say the rest,--But--but--Oh,
there awaits this man the smile of that Christ of the Seven Scars, the
loving tears of Our Lady of Sorrows, the very grace of the Good God!"
"Truly,--Ma'amselle?" asked Marc Dupre wistfully, "in your heart--not
out of its goodness?"
"In my heart of hearts I think this, M'sieu.
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