All the while, old Yvonne, in her corner, pricked up her ears, feeling happiness approach.

“We could make a splice on it—­a marriage, right off, Mademoiselle Gaud, if you are still of the same mind?”

He listened here for her answer, which did not come.  What could stop her from pronouncing that “yes?” He looked astonished and frightened, she could see that.  Her hands clutched the table edge.  She had turned quite white and her eyes were misty; she was voiceless, and looked like some maid dying in her flower.

“Well, Gaud, why don’t you answer?” said Granny Yvonne, who had risen and come towards them.  “Don’t you see, it rather surprises her, Monsieur Yann.  You must excuse her.  She’ll think it over and answer you later on.  Sit you down a bit, Monsieur Yann, and take a glass of cider with us.”

It was not the surprise, but ecstasy that prevented Gaud from answering; no words at all came to her relief.  So it really was true that he was good and kind-hearted.  She knew him aright—­the same true Yann, her own, such as she never had ceased to see him, notwithstanding his sternness and his rough refusal.  For a long time he had disdained her, but now he accepted her, although she was poor.  No doubt it had been his wish all through; he may have had a motive for so acting, which she would know hereafter; but, for the present, she had no intention of asking him his meaning, or of reproaching him for her two years of pining.  Besides, all that was past, ay, and forgotten now; in one single moment everything seemed carried away before the delightful whirlwind that swept over her life!

Still speechless, she told him of her great love and adoration for him by her sweet brimming eyes alone; she looked deeply and steadily at him, while the copious shower of happy tears poured adown her roseate cheeks.

“Well done! and God bless you, my children,” said Granny Moan.  “It’s thankful I be to Him, too, for I’m glad to have been let grow so old to see this happy thing afore I go.”

Still there they remained, standing before one another with clasped hands, finding no words to utter; knowing of no word sweet enough, and no sentence worthy to break that exquisite silence.

“Why don’t ye kiss one another, my children?  Lor’! but they’re dumb!  Dear me, what strange grandchildren I have here!  Pluck up, Gaud; say some’at to him, my dear.  In my time lovers kissed when they plighted their troth.”

Yann raised his hat, as if suddenly seized with a vast, heretofore unfelt reverence, before bending down to kiss Gaud.  It seemed to him that this was the first kiss worthy of the name he ever had given in his life.

She kissed him also, pressing her fresh lips, unused to refinements of caresses, with her whole heart, to his sea-bronzed cheek.

Among the stones the cricket sang of happiness, being right for this time.  And Sylvestre’s pitiful insignificant portrait seemed to smile on them out of its black frame.  All things, in fact, seemed suddenly to throb with life and with joy in the blighted cottage.  The very silence apparently burst into exquisite music; and the pale winter twilight, creeping in at the narrow window, became a wonderful, unearthly glow.