But now for a whole year and a half she had been mainly grave; not melancholy, but given to thought, abstraction, dreams.  She was carrying France upon her heart, and she found the burden not light.  I knew that this was her trouble, but others attributed her abstraction to religious ecstasy, for she did not share her thinkings with the village at large, yet gave me glimpses of them, and so I knew, better than the rest, what was absorbing her interest.  Many a time the idea crossed my mind that she had a secret—­a secret which she was keeping wholly to herself, as well from me as from the others.  This idea had come to me because several times she had cut a sentence in two and changed the subject when apparently she was on the verge of a revelation of some sort.  I was to find this secret out, but not just yet.

The day after the conversation which I have been reporting we were together in the pastures and fell to talking about France, as usual.  For her sake I had always talked hopefully before, but that was mere lying, for really there was not anything to hang a rag of hope for France upon.  Now it was such a pain to lie to her, and cost me such shame to offer this treachery to one so snow-pure from lying and treachery, and even from suspicion of such baseness in others, as she was, that I was resolved to face about now and begin over again, and never insult her more with deception.  I started on the new policy by saying—­still opening up with a small lie, of course, for habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time: 

“Joan, I have been thinking the thing all over last night, and have concluded that we have been in the wrong all this time; that the case of France is desperate; that it has been desperate ever since Agincourt; and that to-day it is more than desperate, it is hopeless.”

I did not look her in the face while I was saying it; it could not be expected of a person.  To break her heart, to crush her hope with a so frankly brutal speech as that, without one charitable soft place in it—­it seemed a shameful thing, and it was.  But when it was out, the weight gone, and my conscience rising to the surface, I glanced at her face to see the result.

There was none to see.  At least none that I was expecting.  There was a barely perceptible suggestion of wonder in her serious eyes, but that was all; and she said, in her simple and placid way: 

“The case of France hopeless?  Why should you think that?  Tell me.”

It is a most pleasant thing to find that what you thought would inflict a hurt upon one whom you honor, has not done it.  I was relieved now, and could say all my say without any furtivenesses and without embarrassment.  So I began: