Before she departed Lorenzo said in quiet tones, almost in her ear.—­“To-morrow is Sunday; I shall be over to see you in the afternoon.”

A few short hours of night, a morning of sunlight on the snow, and again he is by her side renewing his tale of wonders, his interrupted plea.  For it was to her he had been speaking the evening before; Maria knew it well.  The scorn he showed for a country life, his praises of the town, these were but a preface to the allurements he was about to offer in all their varied forms, as one shows the pictures in a book, turning page by page.

“Maria,” he began, “you have not the faintest idea!  As yet, the most wonderful things you ever saw were the shops in Roberval, a high mass, an evening entertainment at the convent with acting.  City people would laugh to think of it!  You simply cannot imagine ...  Just to stroll through the big streets in the evening—­not on little plank-walks like those of Roberval, but on fine broad asphalt pavements as level as a table—­just that and no more, what with the lights, the electric cars coming and going continually, the shops and the crowds, you would find enough there to amaze you for weeks together.  And then all the amusements one has:  theatres, circusses, illustrated papers, and places everywhere that you can go into for a nickel—­five cents—­and pass two hours laughing and crying.  To think, Maria, you do not even know what the moving pictures are!”

He stopped for a little, reviewing in his mind the marvels of the cinematograph, asking himself whether he could hope to describe convincingly the fare it provided:—­those thrilling stories of young girls, deserted or astray, which crowd the screen with twelve minutes of heart-rending misery and three of amends and heavenly reward in surroundings of incredible luxury;—­the frenzied galloping of cowboys in pursuit of Indian ravishers; the tremendous fusillade; the rescue at the last conceivable second by soldiers arriving in a whirlwind, waving triumphantly the star-spangled banner ... after pausing in doubt he shook his head, conscious that he had no words to paint such glories.

They walked on snow-shoes side by side over the snow, through the burnt lands that lie on the Peribonka’s high bank above the fall.  Lorenzo had used no wile to secure Maria’s company, he simply invited her before them all, and now he told of his love, in the same straightforward practical way.

“The first day I saw you, Maria, the very first day ... that is only the truth!  For a long time I had not been back in this country, and I was thinking what a miserable place it was to live in, that the men were a lot of simpletons who had never seen anything and the girls not nearly so quick and clever as they are in the States ...  And then, the moment I set eyes on you, there was I saying to myself that I was the simpleton, for neither at Lowell nor Boston had I ever met a girl like yourself.  When I returned I used to be thinking a dozen times a day that some wretched farmer would make love to you and carry you off, and every time my heart sank.  It was on your account that I came back, Maria, came up here from near Boston, three days’ journey!  The business I had, I could have done it all by letter; it was you I wished to see, to tell you what was in my heart to say and to hear the answer you would give me.”