“And I have a favour to beg,” said Madelon, turning to the woman again.  “I knew Jeanne-Marie well; she was very kind to me at one time.  Might I see the room in which she died?  It is upstairs, is it not, with the window opening on to the steps leading into the garden?”

The woman consented civilly enough, concealing any astonishment she might feel at this tall, beautiful lady, who had come to inquire after Jeanne-Marie; and Madelon left Graham below, and went up alone to the little bed-room, where she had spent so many hours.  It was hardly altered.  The bed stood in the old place; the vines clustered round the window.  Madelon’s heart was full of sorrow; she had loved Jeanne-Marie so much, and more and more perhaps, as years went on, and she had learnt to understand better all that the woman had done for her—­and she had died alone—­she who had saved her life.

When she came down again Louise had reappeared, and was waiting to conduct them to the churchyard.  The child went on in front, and they followed her in silence down the village street.  It was already evening, the sun had sunk behind the hills; the men were returning from their work; the children were playing and shouting, and the women stood gossiping before their doors.  All was life and animation in the little village, where a strange, silent woman had once passed to and fro, with deeds and words of kindness for the suffering and sorrowful, but who would be seen there no more.

“There is the grave,” says Louise, pointing it out to them.  It was in a corner of the little graveyard; the earth was still fresh over it, and the black cross at its head was one of the newest amongst the hundred similar ones round about.  Graham dismissed the child with a gratuity, and he and Madelon went up to the grave.  There was no name, only the initials J. M. R. painted on the cross beneath the three white tears, and the customary “Priez pour elle!” Some one had hung up a wreath of immortelles, and a rose-tree, twined round a neighbouring cross, had shed its petals above Jeanne-Marie’s head.

Madelon knelt down and began to pull out some weeds that had sprung up, whilst Graham stood looking on.  Long afterwards, one might fancy, would that hour still live in his memory—­the peaceful stillness brooding over the little graveyard, the sunset sky, the sheltering hills, the scent of the falling roses, and Madelon, in her dark dress, kneeling by the grave.  Her task was soon accomplished, but she knelt on motionless.  Who shall say of what she was thinking?  Something perhaps of the real meaning of life, of its great underlying sadness, ennobled by patient suffering, by unselfish devotion, for presently she turned round to Graham.

“Oh, Horace,” she said, “help me to be good; I am not, you know, but I would like to be——­and you will help me.”

“My little Madelon!” he raised her up, he took her in his arms.  “We will both try to be good, with God’s help.  The world is all before us, to work in, and do our best—­we will do what we can; with God’s help, I say, we will do what we can.”