Sadly Père Dufresne placed his hand on her bowed head and smoothed her heavy, black hair. “It has come, even to my little maid, _ma petite pucelle_, whom I had thought so far removed from man’s love. My daughter, this love of man brings labor and sorrow, brings pain and tears, and you would go even if it must be that you shall bear pain and sorrow and weep your tears alone?” He spoke more to himself than to her, but she raised her head and answered quickly as if understanding his meaning, or it may be the new-born woman spoke within her. “Yes, father, I see the women labor, and the labor is hard and the days are long; I see the children many, and the women grow old with each one; and I saw Delize Paquette crying because there was no one to stand in the church as father to her baby; but, _mon père_, I see, too, the men and women coming from the long day’s labor together, and they are happy; I see the children bring smiles to their mothers’ tired eyes, and again they are happy; and I see Delize kiss her baby, even as my mother kissed me, and she is happier with that kiss than Madame Bisson who has no child. Bless me and let me go, _mon père_, for my happiness has gone before and beckons to me, and always I see the man’s love leading it.” “Enough, my daughter, it shall be as you wish, and may Our Lady have you in her holy keeping.” * * * * * And so Diâne was wed, not before the altar, no, not there, for the stranger was not of the faith, but without the church door, just where the gaze of Our Lady, high up in her niche near the roof, seemed to rest with benign love and pity. Then, hand in hand, as Diâne and her lover had come down the mountain side, so they went down the valley, away from St. Gregoire to where her happiness seemed beckoning her. They paused away down where the valley turns sharp behind the last of the hills; the church could just be seen, a little white speck in the distance. “Oh, if I might know that day by day the good father will feel that I think of him always. There will be no one now to talk to him by the firelight, no one to tell him the words of the hills.” Diâne’s tone was not one of regretful longing, but rather a great wish that the priest might not feel that she had left him alone. “If there were something which you might give him, something which would always speak for you,” the stranger had answered, feeling that he had indeed taken the sunshine and the song from the old man’s life. “Can you think of something, Diâne, that will please him much?” “There is something,” she said, “but I cannot give him that.” “But tell me; perhaps you may.” “It is a bell; we have never had one. It takes very much money to buy a bell; the people have flax and grain, but, oh, so little money. Père Dufresne said _le bon Dieu_ might send us one some time if we were not forgetful.” “A bell it shall be that you shall give him,” the stranger promised, but Diâne only smiled wistfully and turned away.