“Yet one would rather do that than never have a wedding at all.”

“I kiss your hand on that, mademoiselle.”

“What are those little rings around the base of the trees, monsieur the colonel?”

“They are marks which show that the water is already falling.  It must be two inches lower than last night on the Church of the Immaculate Conception.  I am one sixth of a foot on my way toward matrimony.”

A tent like a white blossom showed through the woods; then many more.  The bluffs all about Pierre Menard’s house were dotted with them.  Boats could be seen coming back from the town, full of people.  Two or three sails were tacking northward on that smooth and glistening fresh-water sea.  Music came across it, meeting the rising sun; the nuns sang their matin service as they were rowed.

Angelique closed her eyes over tears.  It seemed to her like floating into the next world,—­in music, in soft shadow, in keen rapture,—­seeing the light on the hills beyond while her beloved held her by the hand.

All day boats passed back and forth between the tented bluffs and the roofs of Kaskaskia, carrying the goods of a temporarily houseless people.  At dusk, some jaded men came back—­among them Captain Saucier and Colonel Menard—­from searching overflow and uplands for Dr. Dunlap.

At dusk, also, the fireflies again scattered over the lake, without waiting for a belated moon.  Jean Lozier stood at the top of the bluff, on his old mount of vision, and watched these boats finishing the work of the day.  They carried the only lights now to be seen in Kaskaskia.

He was not excited by the swarming life just below him.  His idea of Kaskaskia was not a buzzing encampment around a glittering seigniory house, with the governor’s presence giving it grandeur, and Rice Jones and his sister, waiting their temporary burial on the uplands, giving it awe.  Old Kaskaskia had been over yonder, the place of his desires, his love.  The glamour and beauty and story were on the smothered valley, and for him they could never be anywhere else.

Father Olivier came out on the bluff, and Jean at once pulled his cap off, and looked at the ground instead of at the pale green and wild-rose tints at the farther side of the world.  They heard the soft wash of the flood.  The priest bared his head to the evening air.

“My son, I am sorry your grandfather died last night, while I was unable to reach him.”

“Yes, father.”

“You have been a good son.  Your conscience acquits you.  And now the time has come when you are free to go anywhere you please.”

Jean looked over the flood.

“But there’s no place to go to now, father.  I was waiting for Kaskaskia, and Kaskaskia is gone.”

“Not gone, my son.  The water will soon recede.  The people will return to their homes.  Kaskaskia will be the capital of the new State yet.”

“Yes, father,” said Jean dejectedly.  He waited until the priest sauntered away.  It was not for him to contradict a priest.  But watching humid darkness grow over the place where Kaskaskia had been, he told himself in repeated whispers,—­