Now Anglice had a wild, strange beauty that made other women seem tame beside her; and in the course of time the young men found themselves regarding their ward not so much like brothers as at first.  In brief, they found themselves in love with her.

They struggled with their hopeless passion month after month, neither betraying his secret to the other; for the austere orders which they were about to assume precluded the idea of love and marriage.  Until then they had dwelt in the calm air of religious meditations, unmoved except by that pious fervor which in other ages taught men to brave the tortures of the rack and to smile amid the flames.  But a blonde girl, with great eyes and a voice like the soft notes of a vesper hymn, had come in between them and their ascetic dreams of heaven.  The ties that had bound the young men together snapped silently one by one.  At last each read in the pale face of the other the story of his own despair.

And she?  If Anglice shared their trouble, her face told no story.  It was like the face of a saint on a cathedral window.  Once, however, as she came suddenly upon the two men and overheard words that seemed to burn like fire on the lip of the speaker, her eyes grew luminous for an instant.  Then she passed on, her face as immobile as before in its setting of wavy gold hair.

     “Entre or et roux Dieu fit ses longs cheveux.”

One night Emile and Anglice were missing.  They had flown—­but whither, nobody knew, and nobody save Antoine cared.  It was a heavy blow to Antoine—­for he had himself half resolved to confess his love to Anglice and urge her to fly with him.

A strip of paper slipped from a volume on Antoine’s priedieu, and fluttered to his feet.

“Do not be angry,” said the bit of paper, piteously; "forgive us, for we love.” ("Pardonnez-nous, car nous aimons.”)

Three years went by wearily enough.  Antoine had entered the Church, and was already looked upon as a rising man; but his face was pale and his heart leaden, for there was no sweetness in life for him.

Four years had elapsed, when a letter, covered with outlandish postmarks, was brought to the young priest—­a letter from Anglice.  She was dying;—­would he forgive her?  Emile, the year previous, had fallen a victim to the fever that raged on the island; and their child, Anglice, was likely to follow him.  In pitiful terms she begged Antoine to take charge of the child until she was old enough to enter the convent of the Sacre-Coeur.  The epistle was finished hastily by another hand, informing Antoine of Madame Jardin’s death; it also told him that Anglice had been placed on board a vessel shortly to leave the island for some Western port.

The letter, delayed by storm and shipwreck, was hardly read and wept over when little Anglice arrived.

On beholding her, Antoine uttered a cry of joy and surprise—­she was so like the woman he had worshiped.