Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (French III).djvu/150

140, the sweet child, and she raised her pretty head out of the hammock, like a bird out of its nest, and looked at him with her lips parted, not venturing to speak again.

"At last he said: 'Oh! dear Laura! the nearer we approach to America, I cannot help it, but so much the sadder I become. I know not why it is, but I feel as if this voyage will have been the happiest part of our life.'

"'And so it seems to me,' said she, 'and I wish we might never arrive.'

"He looked at her, pressing his hands together with an expression of feeling you cannot imagine.

"'And yet, my angel, you always weep when you pray to God,' said he, 'and that distresses me sadly, for I well know whom you are thinking of, and I fear you are sorry for what you have done.'

"'I sorry!' said she, with a look of much pain,—'I sorry to have followed you, dearest! Do you think that because I had been yours so short a time, I loved you the less? Is one not a woman and does one not know one's duty at seventeen? My mother and my sisters, did they not say that it was my duty to follow you to Guiana? Did they not say I was doing nothing wonderful? I am only surprised that you should have been so touched by it, dearest: it was all perfectly natural. And now I do not know how you can imagine