"Who is it, then?" persisted Guida. "Eh ben, that is the thing!"

"How can you tell that one is in love, Maitresse Aimable? "persisted
Guida.

The other smiled with a torturing placidity, then opened her mouth;
but nothing came of it. She watched Guida moving about the kitchen
abstractedly. Her eye wandered to the racllyi, with its flitches of
bacon, to the dreschiaux and the sanded floor, to the great Elizabethan
oak chair, and at last back to Guida, as though through her the lost
voice might be charmed up again.

The eyes of the two met now, fairly, firmly; and Guida was conscious of a
look in the other's face which she had never seen before. Had then a new
sight been given to herself? She saw and understood the look in
Maitresse Aimable's face, and instantly knew it to be the same that was
in her own.

With a sudden impulse she dropped the bashin she was polishing, and,
going over quickly, she silently laid her cheek against her old friend's.
She could feel the huge breast heave, she felt the vast face turn hot,
she was conscious of a voice struggling back to life, and she heard it
say at last:

"Gatd'en'ale, rosemary tea cures a cough, but nothing cures the love--ah
bah, so it goes!"

"Do you love Jean?" whispered Guida, not showing her face, but longing
to hear the experience of another who suffered that joy called love.