She might have been married twice over, and no one in Granpere would have sent him word.

So he declared to himself.

And yet Marie Bromar had once sworn to him that she loved him, and would be his for ever and ever; and, though he had left her in dudgeon, with black looks, without a kind word of farewell, yet he had believed her.

Through all his sojourn at Colmar he had told himself that she would be true to him.

He believed it, though he was hardly sure of himself--had hardly resolved that he would ever go back to Granpere to seek her.