"It is all very well to say so," replied M. Périères, "but our horses could never gallop through this underwood; to walk through it would be as much as they could do just at present. The elephants, on the contrary, do not care one jot for thickets, trees, or thorns, and they would overtake us in a second, if they were to take it into their heads to pursue us."
"Your remarks are so far true, my dear Périères," ^aid M. de Morin, who up to this time had refrained from giving any opinion, "that I do not intend to remount, having far more confidence in my own legs than in those of my steed."
"You are determined to stay here, then?" asked M. Delange.
"Certainly, if Madame de Guéran does not order me to move away."
"I assure you," said the Baroness, "that I should very much like to issue such an order, but it appears to me that it would be too late. Our horses are no longer intent on cropping the grass of the clearing. Their heads are all turned towards one point, their ears are pricked, and they are trembling in every limb. Their instinct tells them that a powerful enemy is advancing against them. See! they are careering off in all directions."
And so it was. The horses left, according to the Arab custom, at liberty in the clearing, were galloping off.
"There is still time to beat a retreat," said M. Delange. "You know I am no coward, but in some cases courage is useless."
"Evidently so," added M. Périères.
Madame de Guéran raised her eyes to the last speaker, and in her look there was something akin to reproach, as if she were annoyed with M. Périères for siding with the Doctor and declining to face the danger.
She, doubtless, was in that frame of mind which renders women bold. She was, perhaps, feeling the false position she occupied towards these two men, both of whom adored her and were yearning to tell her so, but whose protestations she was bound to repress. She was asking herself whether the ordeal which she had imposed and they were undergoing was not beyond both their strength and hers. Possibly she went so far as to confess to herself that she was in imminent danger, with a gloomy future before her. Would it not be better for them, for her, and even for him whom she was anxious to rejoin, that the situation should be brought to a head without further delay, at that very moment, in the forest, on the spot where they now were? Why brave fresh dangers to which they would succumb sooner or later? Was it not better to die a sudden death in that lovely scene than to waste away by inches from sickness and fatigue? At all events she could die now with an easy conscience, without remorse of any sort; could she answer for it that she would not in the immediate future have some weakness wherewith to reproach herself, some fault to deplore?