“But a bucketful, Edouard!” cried the fellow boisterously. He brimmed the horns as he spoke. A vinous pigment already freckled his cheeks.
“I see here nothing but an excuse for an orgy,” thought the visitor.
The company sprawled over a bank to one side of the clearing where the great tree stood. The wine-flasks lay cool in moss. The two countrymen had thrown off their coats and bared their shaggy chests to the night. Overhead the moon was already of a power to strew the forest lanes with travelling blots of shadow, like dead leaves moving on a languid stream. A cricket chirruped here and there in spasms, as if irresistibly tickled by the recollection of some pleasantry. From time to time, across the dim perspective of a glade, a momentary indiscernible shape would steal and vanish.
Ned pondered over the enchantment—as moving less prosaic souls—of moonlit haunted woods.
“Now, I wonder,” thought he, “if I could put myself en rapport with the undefinable in less Philistine company!”
As if in reply, “What would not Nicette interpret of these fairy solitudes?” said a dreamy voice at his back.
He turned his head. Théroigne had come softly, and was seated with St Denys a little above him on the bank.
“She is not of the club, then?” said Ned.
The student laughed truculently, throwing back his head with a noise as if he were gargling.
“Little Boppard is beyond himself,” said Ned. “We shall make a man of him yet.”