The Beloved Traitor (Mystery Classic). Frank L. Packard
on along the beach, his brain feverishly chaotic. She had been like a vision, a glorious vision, suddenly gone, as she had stood there in the doorway. Her name was Myrna Bliss. Why not, since Father Anton could not go that night, why not go to Marie-Louise himself and tell her about the house? Yes; he would do that.
He crossed the beach to the road again, and started on—walking rapidly. As he neared the little bridge, his pace slowed. At the bridge he halted. Perhaps it would be better not to go—it would be better left to Father Anton, that!
"Sacré bleu!" cried Jean suddenly aloud. "What is the matter with me? What has happened?"
But he went no further along the road; for, after a moment, he turned, retracing his steps slowly toward Bernay-sur-Mer.
And so that night Jean did not go to Marie-Louise. But there, at the house on the bluff, later on, Marie-Louise, after Mother Fregeau had gone to bed, took the beacon that Jean had made and placed it upon the table in the front room where, before, that other beacon, the great lamp, had stood. And for a long time she sat before it, her elbows on the table, now looking at the little clay figure, now staring through the window to the headland's point where sometimes she could see the surf splash silver white in the moonlight. It had been a happy afternoon in many ways; but there was something that would not let it be all happiness, for there was confusion in her thoughts. The house was lonely now, and Uncle Gaston had gone; it did not seem true, it did not seem that it could be he would not open that door again and come thumping in with the nets over his shoulders and the wooden floats bumping on the floor—and the tears unbidden filled her eyes. And her talk with Jean somehow had not satisfied her, had not dispelled that intuition that troubled her, for all that he had laughed at her for it; and they had not, after all, settled what she was to do now that Uncle Gaston was gone, for, instead of talking more about it, Jean had forgotten all about her for ever so long while he had worked at the little clay figure.
Her eyes, from the window, fastened on the beacon with its open, outstretched arms—and, suddenly, confusion went and great tenderness came. He had made it for her, and he had said that—that it was her.
"Jean's beacon," she said softly.
And presently she went upstairs to the little attic room, and undressed, and blew out the candle; and, in her white night-robe, the black hair streaming over her shoulders, the moonlight upon her, she knelt beside the bed.
"Make me that, mon Père," she whispered; "make me that—Jean's beacon all through my life."
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