La Vireville gave a rather shaken laugh. Had this impossible thing really happened? Anne-Hilarion never lied. But—it must have been someone else!
"You did not learn her name, I suppose, child?" he asked, his heart beginning to thud.
"Yes," responded Anne. "I asked Grandpapa afterwards, because I liked her. She was called the Comtesse de Préfontaine—or perhaps it was Guéfontaine."
La Vireville's heart missed a couple of beats, then pounded harder than ever, seeming to shake his whole body—a humiliating experience. But for his present physical condition, however, no doubt he would not have gasped for breath as he did, nor would the colour have come and gone like a woman's in his hollow cheeks. Nevertheless, as both these things happened, Anne-Hilarion looked at him in a little dismay.
"You are—do you feel ill, M. le Chevalier?" he asked solicitously.
"No—yes," stammered Fortuné, lifting himself on his elbow. "No, child, don't move! It is not that you are . . . too heavy." He drew a long breath, closed his eyes, and dropped back on his pillows. "What did you and Grandpapa tell Mme. de Guéfontaine?" he asked, after a moment.
"Grandpapa told her, I think, that the Republican soldiers had shot you at that place—Quiberon. . . . M. le Chevalier," continued Anne, leaning with very wide-open eyes towards him, and thus still further contributing to the discomfort of the leg on which he was situated, "did they really and truly shoot you?"
"Well," said Fortuné, in a dreamy voice, "they did and they did not. Anyhow, here I am, you see." He reopened his eyes.
"Yes," said Anne, in a tone of great contentment, and bestowed on his friend one of those infrequent smiles of his, sudden and shy, at the same time sliding his hand into the strong, wasted one lying idly near it on the coverlet.
A thrill ran up Fortuné's arm. Ever since he had seen Anne standing by the door he had been conscious of a strange sensation, as if, with the advent of the child who had sailed the seas with him on that wild adventure, there had begun to blow through his hot brain the first whisper of a clean and joyous breath that came from the waves themselves. A moment or two ago, those lips had made him an annunciation the full meaning of which he could hardly grasp. Now, at the little warm touch, his eyes were suddenly opened, and he saw the tainted memory in his heart as only a handful of dead dust, not worth the keeping, fit only to be scattered on that wind of morning. It was the past, useless and done with, a thing long dead. . . . Here, close to him, touching him, smiling at him, enshrined in this child who had no past, shone the future, like something gallant and green with the dew on it, and, blowing over it, that strong, fresh wind. The worthless burden he had carried for years fell from him. He too could have what René de Flavigny had, the air of morning at his gates—nay, morning's self. . . .