Page:A Leaf in the Storm.djvu/271

 At night, when the guests had departed, and all was quite still within and without, Reine Allix sat alone at her window in the roof, thinking of their future and of her past, and watching the stars come out, one by another, above the woods. From her lattice in the eaves she saw straight up the village street; saw the dwellings of her lifelong neighbours, the slopes of the rich fields, the gleam of the broad grey water, the whiteness of the crucifix against the darkened sky.

She saw it all—all so familiar, with that intimate association only possible to the peasant who has dwelt on one spot from birth to age.

In that faint light, in those deep shadows, she could trace all the scene as though the brightness of the noon shone on it; it was all, in its homeliness and simplicity, intensely dear to her.

In the playtime of her Childhood, in the courtship of her youth, in the joys and woes of her wifehood and widowhood, the bitter pains and sweet ecstasies of her maternity, the hunger and privation of struggling, desolate years, the contentment and serenity of old age,-in all these her eyes had rested only on this small quaint leafy street, with its dwellings close and low, like beehives in a garden, and its pasture-lands and corn-lands, wood-girt and water fed, stretching as far as the sight could reach.