We caught it, however, easily, and again had a compartment to ourselves; a boon which, in our then frame of mind, we were not backward in appreciating. For we were full of happiness and gaiety, a jocund irresponsible couple, who had now finally shaken off the shackles of constraint, and were bound for the wilderness where no proprieties were to question nor dangers to apprehend. Even the absurd little shadow of Carabas was to me, in its dissipating, a matter for some small self-congratulation, and I felt our flight into the seaboard solitudes the breezier for its absence. As the long wastes came about us, I flapped my wings, literally, like an imprisoned gull that smells the ocean salt borne inland on a gale, and I croaked out my jubilance. Fifine laughed, protestingly but indulgently.
“What a child you are!” she said.
“And just now I was a pedant,” I answered. “Truly some gossips are hard to please.”
But suppressed excitement glowed in her all the same. It was her habit to take it sedately; yet I could read the underlying emotion in every pulse of colour that came and went in her cheek. Her eyes might dream slumberous; but in their depths was an exulting spark that confessed their vivid wakefulness. And she cried out once with rapture when there passed close by the windows of the running train a characteristic little procession—a shepherd boy, driving a flock of twenty or so sheep, each individual member of which wore a favour of crimson ribbon knotted into the wool above his withers.
“O, how pretty!” cried Fifine. “We are in Arcady, Felix—and—and I will never eat mutton again.”
“Arcady it may be,” said I: “but, if so, Arcady has its wolves. Do you see that great dim cliff of a hill over there?” (we were then nearing Vauvert). “That is in the Cevennes, Fifine, and its name is Le Loup.”
“It shall stand for the symbol of all the wolves that ever were,” said Fifine; “stricken into stone for their cruelties. I say this is Arcady; and it shall be.”
“Very well,” I answered. “I am agreeable. Arcady it shall be—the land of lovingkindness, where to be fond is not to be suspected. We can be better friends than ever in Arcady, Fifine.”
“Can we?” she said, turning to look again from her window. “O, yes! I suppose so.”
“Why!” I said. “Don’t you want us to be?”