Maria was leaning against the door, a hand still upon the latch, her eyes turned away.  Eutrope Gagnon had just this and no more to offer her:  after a year of waiting that she should become his wife, and live as now she was doing in another wooden house on another half-cleared farm ...  Should do the household work and the cooking, milk the cows, clean the stable when her man was away—­labour in the fields perhaps, since she was strong and there would be but two of them ...  Should spend her evenings at the spinning-wheel or in patching old clothes ...  Now arid then in summer resting for half an hour, seated on the door-step, looking across their scant fields girt by the measureless frowning woods; or in winter thawing a little patch with her breath on the windowpane, dulled with frost, to watch the snow falling on the wintry earth and the forest ...  The forest ...  Always the inscrutable, inimical forest, with a host of dark things hiding there—­closed round them with a savage grip that must be loosened little by little, year by year; a few acres won each spring and autumn as the years pass, throughout all the long days of a dull harsh life ...  No, that she could not face ...

“I know well enough that we shall have to work hard at first,” Eutrope went on, “but you have courage, Maria, and are well used to labour, as I am.  I have always worked hard; no one can say that I was ever lazy, and if only you will marry me it will be my joy to toil like an ox all the day long to make a thriving place of it, so that we shall be in comfort before old age comes upon us.  I do not touch drink, Maria, and truly I love you ...”

His voice quivered, and he put out his hand toward the latch to take hers, or perhaps to hinder her from opening the door and leaving him without his answer.

“My affection for you ... of that I am not able to speak ...”

Never a word did she utter in reply.  Once more a young man was telling his love, was placing in her hands all he had to give; and once more she could but hearken in mute embarrassment, only saved from awkwardness by her immobility and silence.  Town-bred girls had thought her stupid, when she was but honest and truthful; very close to nature which takes no account of words.  In other days when life was simpler than now it is, when young men paid their court—­masterfully and yet half bashfully—­to some deep-bosomed girl in the ripe fullness of womanhood who had not heard nature’s imperious command, she must have listened thus, in silence; less attentive to their pleading than to the inner voice, guarding herself by distance against too ardent a wooing, whilst she awaited ...  Chapdelaine were not drawn to her by any charm of gracious speech, but by her sheer comeliness, and the transparent honest heart dwelling in her bosom; when they spoke to her of love she was true to herself, steadfast and serene, saying no word where none was needful to be said, and for this they loved her only the more.