“A long journey?”
“Yes; we shall not be really safe until we are among M. le Comte’s friends in the Bocage.”
“Is that far?” she asked.
“Not so far but that we shall win through safely,” I assured her.
She lay back again upon the moss with a long sigh of utter weariness.
“You must sleep,” I added, gently. “Do not fight it off—yield to it. You will need your strength—all of it—for to-night.”
“For to-night?”
“Yes; we dare not start until darkness comes, and we must get forward as far as we can ere daybreak. You can sleep in perfect security. No one suspects that we are hidden here.”
She did not answer, but turned on one side, laid her head upon her arm and closed her eyes. Sleep, I knew, would claim her in a moment.
I crept forward to the mouth of the cavern and sitting down behind the screen of vines pulled them aside a little and peered down the valley, in the hope that I might see Pasdeloup and M. le Comte making their way toward us. But there was no one in sight, nor could I hear any sound of conflict in the direction whence we had come. It might be, I told myself, that Pasdeloup by some miracle had again succeeded in saving his master, and that they had fled together in some other direction; but I felt there were limits to the power of even his supreme devotion. Certainly no situation could have been more critical and hopeless than that in which I had left my friend.