There must be a word or two more said of the difference between George Voss and his father which had ended in sending George to Colmar; a word or two about that, and a word also of what occurred between George and Marie. Then we shall be able to commence our story without farther reference to things past. As Michel Voss was a just, affectionate, and intelligent man, he would not probably have objected to a marriage between the two young people, had the proposition for such a marriage been first submitted to him, with a proper amount of attention to his judgment and controlling power. But the idea was introduced to him in a manner which taught him to think that there was to be a clandestine love affair. To him George was still a boy, and Marie not much more than a child, and—without much thinking—he felt that the thing was improper.
‘I won’t have it, George,’ he had said.
‘Won’t have what, father?’
’Never mind. You know. If you can’t get over it in any other way, you had better go away. You must do something for yourself before you can think of marrying.’
‘I am not thinking of marrying.’
’Then what were you thinking of when I saw you with Marie? I won’t have it for her sake, and I won’t have it for mine, and I won’t have it for your own. You had better go away for a while.’
‘I’ll go away to-morrow if you wish it, father.’ Michel had turned away, not saying another word; and on the following day George did go away, hardly waiting an hour to set in order his part of his father’s business. For it must be known that George had not been an idler in his father’s establishment. There was a trade of wood-cutting upon the mountain-side, with a saw-mill turned by water beneath, over which George had presided almost since he had left the school of the commune. When his father told him that he was bound to do something before he got married, he could not have intended to accuse him of having been hitherto idle. Of the wood-cutting and the saw-mill