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I can not pretend to explain just how it came about. Doubtless Henry Stevens’s influence had something to do with it, though I feel sure Priscilla’s had more. Doubtless the marquis was naturally susceptible to religions influences. Certain it is that the socialistic opinions, never very deeply rooted, and at most but a reaction, disappeared, and there came a religious sentiment like that of his friends. He was drawn to the little class meeting, which seemed to him so simple a confessional that all his former notions of “liberty, fraternity, and equality” were satisfied by it. I believe he became a “probationer,” but his creed was never quite settled enough for him to accept “full membership.”

Some of the old folks could not refrain from expressions of triumph that “the Lord had got a hold of that French infidel”: and old Sister Goodenough seized his hand, and, with many sighs and much upturning of the eyes, exhorted him: “Brother Markus, give up everything! give up everything, and come out from the world and be separated!” Which led D’Entremont to remark to Stevens, as they walked away, that “Madame Goodenough was vare curus indeed!” And Brother Boreas, the exhorter, who had the misfortune not to have a business reputation without blemish, but who made up for it by rigid scruples in regard to a melodeon in the church, and by a vicarious conscience which was kindly kept at everybody’s service but his own–old Brother Boreas always remarked in regard to the marquis, that “as for his part he liked a deeper repentance and a sounder conversion.” But the gray-haired old Scotch class leader, whose piety was at a premium everywhere, would take D’Entremont’s hand and talk of indifferent subjects while he beamed on him his affection and Christian fellowship.

To the marquis Priscilla was a perpetual marvel. More brilliant women he had known in Paris, more devout women he had seen there, but a woman so gifted and so devout, and, above all, a woman so true, so modest, and of such perfect delicacy of feeling he had never known. And how poorly these words describe her! For she was Priscilla; and all who knew her will understand how much more that means than any adjectives of mine. Certainly Henry Stevens did, for he had known her always, and would have loved her always had he dared. It was only now, as she interpreted him to the marquis and the marquis to him, idealizing and elevating the thoughts of both, that he surrendered himself to hope. And so, toward the close of the summer, affairs came to this awkward posture that these two sworn friends loved the same woman.

D’Entremont discovered this first. More a man of the world than Henry Stevens, he read the other’s face and voice. He was perturbed. Had it occurred two years before, he might have settled the matter easily by a duel, for instance. And even now his passion got the better for a while of all his good feelings and Christian resolutions. When he got back to the Le Vert House with his unpleasant discovery he was burning like a furnace. In spite of a rain storm just beginning and a dark night, he strode out and walked he knew not whither. He found himself, he knew not how, on the bank of the Ohio. He untied a skiff and pushed out into the river. How to advance himself over his rival was his first thought. But this darkness and this beating rain and this fierce loneliness reminded him of that night when he had clung desperately to the abutment of the bridge that spanned Indian Creek, and when the courage and self-possession of Henry Stevens had rescued him. Could he be the rival of a man who had gone down into the flood that he might save the exhausted marquis?

Then he hated himself. Why had he not drowned that night? And with this feeling of self-disgust added to his general mental misery and the physical misery that the rain brought to him, there came the great temptation to write “Fin,” in French fashion, by jumping into the water. But something in the influence of Priscilla and that class meeting caused him to take a better resolution, and he returned to the hotel.