“But you need not. We have planned that. I will be a son to him in all his declining years. No, you need never be separated.” “Then you will stay!” exultingly. If she could once conquer she would be generous and consent afterward. Did not love yield everything? “I _must_ go. We three will go.” His breath came in a gasp, his eyes deepened with fervor, he caught both her hands; he could have clasped her in his arms in a transport of rapture. Only—she stood up so straight and resolute. “So you have planned all this!” she cried in a passion that had a pang for her as well as him. “And I am not anywhere. It makes no difference what I want. I am like any bale of merchandise tossed from one to the other. That is all a woman is worth! But you will find I am not to be bandied about.” She had lashed her emotion into tears, and pulled away her hands with an impatient gesture. “Heaven above knows what you are worth to both of us. No one will ever love you more truly, more devotedly.” Renée de Longueville fled swiftly away. CHAPTER XX WHEN A WOMAN WILL “What ails the child?” inquired Mère Lunde. “She has not been like herself the last fortnight. And now she is in there, crying as if her heart would break. It is all that André Valbonais, I know. Why does he not marry her and be done with it?” “But if she will not?” Gaspard Denys shrugged his shoulders and drew his brow into a frown. “In my time a man knew how to make a woman say yes. And a woman knew when she was going to get a good husband, which is of the Lord. Gaspard Denys, you have spoiled her!” Yes, he had spoiled her. A man did not know how to bring up a girl. But she was so sweet in all her wilfulness, so loving in spite of little tempers and authoritative ways, so dear to him, that if she had wanted to walk over his body with her dainty feet he could hardly have refused her. He went into her room and took her in his arms. “You are too good to me!” she cried presently. “And I am a miserable, hateful, quarrelsome, selfish little thing, wanting my own way and then not happy or satisfied with it. Oh, how will you endure me years and years, getting queerer as I grow old! For now we will have to live here together always. I have sent André away. Oh, will you care?” There was no use arguing. She had cried herself into an unreasonable passion. She had had her way. How much of it was regret? None of it was satisfaction. “Well, dear, then we must get along,” and his tone had a tranquillizing cheerfulness in it. “There is no one I would like as well for a son——” “But you do not want to go to that wretched New Orleans?” in a tone of incredulity. She raised her head from his shoulder. Her swollen eyes and tear-stained face melted his heart. “You know we were going some time. It is well worth seeing. But we do not need to take André.” “Yet you like him so,” with her old waywardness. “Yes. And I am sorry you do not.”