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The gamins laughed and chattered in their soft patois; the Don smiled tenderly upon Athanasia, and she durst not look at the reeds as she talked, lest their crescendo sadness yield a foreboding. Just then a wee girl appeared, clad in a multi-hued garment, evidently a sister to the small fishermen.
Her keen black eyes set in a dusky face glanced sharply and suspiciously at the group as she clambered over the wet embankment, and it seemed the drizzling mist grew colder, the sobbing wind more pronounced in its prophetic wail. Athanasia rose suddenly. "Let us go," she said; "the eternal feminine has spoiled it all." The bayou flows as calmly, as darkly, as full of hidden passions as ever.
Their angling was rewarded only by a little black water-moccasin that wriggled and forked its venomous red tongue in an attempt to exercise its death-dealing prerogative. This Athanasia insisted must go back into its native black waters, and paid the price the boys asked that it might enjoy its freedom.
I was in great spirits, my mind being full of Mary Osborne. At one moment I saw but her own ordinary face, only what I had used to regard as dulness I now interpreted as the possession of her soul in patience; at another I saw the glorified countenance of my Athanasia, knowing that, beneath the veil of the other, this, the real, the true face ever lay.
Thence it was, I say, that I lost my hope in God. For, if there were a God, how could he let purity be clasped in the arms of defilement? how could he marry my Athanasia not to a corpse, but to a Plague? Here was the man who had done more to ruin her brother than any but her father, and God had given her to him!
Through palace and chapel and charnel-house, I followed her, ever with a dim sense of awful result; and when at the last she lifted the shining veil, instead of the face of Athanasia, the bare teeth of a skull grinned at me from under a spotted shroud, through which the sunlight shone from behind, revealing all its horrors. I was not mad my reason had not given way: how remains a marvel.
Can it be!" said Etienne, interrupting himself. "Yes, it is the sound of a post-horn." "Perhaps it is some of our guests," suggested Madame Etienne. "No no, for our postilions to-day play but one air, 'Je suis pere, un pere heureux," said Monsieur Etienne, listening with all his might to the approaching horn. "It is a passenger," said he, despondingly, "Athanasia, my angel, we are lost!"
On the threshold stood my guide, bending towards me, as if waiting for me to pass out also. I lifted my eyes: the veil had fallen it was my lost Athanasia! Not one beam touched her face, for her back was to the sun, yet her face was radiant.
Instantly, body and soul, I was cool as a Summer eve after a thunder-shower. For a moment, precious as an aeon, she held her hands upon me then slowly opened her eyes. Out of them flashed the living soul of my Athanasia.
"Athanasia, my goddess," said Monsieur Etienne, coming in on tiptoe, "how do you feel to-day?" She reached out her pale hand and answered in a languid voice: "The doctor says that, so far, I am doing pretty well, and, by great precautions, I may be able, in a few weeks, to resume my household duties." Monsieur Etienne raised his eyebrows, and looked thoughtful.
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