Olive glanced up. Madame Delphine was not prepared for the movement, and on that account repeated her question:
The dreamer took the hand that was laid upon hers between her own palms, bowed her head, and gave them a soft kiss.
The mother submitted. Wherefore, in the silence which followed, a daughter's conscience felt the burden of having withheld an answer, and Olive presently said, as the pair sat looking up into the sky:
"I was thinking of Père Jerome's sermon."
Madame Delphine had feared so. Olive had lived on it ever since the day it was preached. The poor mother was almost ready to repent having ever afforded her the opportunity of hearing it. Meat and drink had become of secondary value to her daughter; she fed upon the sermon.
Olive felt her mother's thought and knew that her mother knew her own; but now that she had confessed, she would ask a question:
"Do you think, _maman_, that Père Jerome knows it was I who gave that missal?"
"No," said Madame Delphine, "I am sure he does not."
"Yes, I do. He said in his sermon he did."
Both remained for a long time very still, watching the moon gliding in and through among the small dark-and-white clouds. At last the daughter spoke again.
"I wish I was Père--I wish I was as good as Père Jerome."
"My child," said Madame Delphine, her tone betraying a painful summoning of strength to say what she had lacked the courage to utter,--"my child, I pray the good God you will not let your heart go after one whom you may never see in this world!"
The maiden turned her glance, and their eyes met. She cast her arms about her mother's neck, laid her cheek upon it for a moment, and then, feeling the maternal tear, lifted her lips, and, kissing her, said:
But the voice was one, not of willing consent, but of desperate resolution.
"It would be useless, anyhow," said the mother, laying her arm around her daughter's waist.
Olive repeated the kiss, prolonging it passionately.
"I have nobody but you," murmured the girl; "I am a poor quadroone!"
She threw back her plaited hair for a third embrace, when a sound in the shrubbery startled them.
"_Qui ci ça?_" called Madame Delphine, in a frightened voice, as the two stood up, holding to each other.
"It was only the dropping of a twig," she whispered, after a long holding of the breath. But they went into the house and barred it everywhere.