Jean Jacques shed no tears on the night that his beloved flour-mill
became a blackened ruin, and his saw-mill had a narrow escape. He was
like one in a dream, scarcely realizing that men were saying kind things
to him; that the New Cure held his hand and spoke to him more like a
brother than one whose profession it was to be good to those who
suffered. In his eyes was the same half-rapt, intense, distant look which
came into them when, at Vilray, he saw that red reflection in the sky
over against St. Saviour's, and urged his horses onward.
The world knew that the burning of the mill was a blow to Jean Jacques,
but it did not know how great and heavy the blow was. First one and then
another of his friends said he was insured, and that in another six
months the mill-wheel would be turning again. They said so to Jean
Jacques when he stood with his eyes fixed on the burning fabric, which
nothing could save; but he showed no desire to speak. He only nodded and
kept on staring at the fire with that curious underglow in his eyes. Some
chemistry of the soul had taken place in him in the hour when he drove to
the Manor Cartier from Vilray, and it produced a strange fire, which
merged into the reflection of the sky above the burning mill. Later, came
things which were strange and eventful in his life, but that under-glow
was for ever afterwards in his eyes.
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