Two livid spots began to burn in his cheeks as he sat down
opposite Thornton. He turned the light low, and his eyes glowed more
darkly and with an animal-like luster in the half gloom. Something in
him now, a quivering, struggling passion that lay behind those eyes,
held Thornton white and silent.
"M'sieur," he began in the low voice which Thornton was beginning to
understand, "I am going to tell you something which I have told to but
two other human beings. It is the story of another man--a man from
civilization, like you, who came up into this country of ours years
and years ago, and who met a woman, as you have met this girl at
Oxford House, and who loved her as you love this one, and perhaps
more. It is singular that the case should be so similar, m'sieur, and
it is because of this that I believe Our Blessed Lady gives me courage
to tell it to you. For this man, like you, left a wife--and two
children--when he came into the North. M'sieur, I pray the Great God
to forgive him, for he left a third child--unborn."
Jan leaned upon his hand so that it shaded his face.
"It is not so much of THAT as of what followed that I am going to tell
you, m'sieur," he went on. "It was a beautiful love--on the woman's
part, and it would have been a beautiful love on the man's part if it
had been pure.
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