“Certainly,” responded M. de Brencourt, without moving a muscle of that expressionless face. “I have tried to shoot the Duc de Trélan”—the priest gave an exclamation—“and failed . . . he does not know it—you can tell him if you like . . . and I have tried to shoot myself and failed. I do not wish to live, but if I cannot kill myself, what other choice is there for the moment?” He brushed some bits of dead leaf off his knees, put his pistol back into his belt, and rising, held out his hand for his sword. “Did I leave it in the road?” he enquired, in the same emotionless way. “Thank you. I will try to have you informed, Monsieur l’Abbé, if I am killed when the campaign opens, as I trust I shall be; I expect you would like to know. But you need not fear that I shall ever seek to see either of them again.”

He slipped his sword carefully back into the scabbard, made the petrified priest a sort of salute, and went quietly past him to the gap in the hedge where his horse was tied.

And M. Chassin, who had come out prepared to fight dragons, turned and stared after him dumbly, knowing not whether to give thanks or no. For this time M. de Brencourt had frightened him. But, just as the Comte got into the saddle, he felt a sudden violent impulse to say something that would pierce that terrifying calm. He could not let him go like that. Calling to him, he hurried to the gap and came out into the road beside him and his horse. The Comte looked down at him with his mask of a face.

“Monsieur le Comte,” said the little priest earnestly, “I have a feeling that some day, in spite of everything, you will be given an opportunity of serving that lady you have loved and wronged . . . May God forgive you and go with you!”

“Thank you; you are most kind,” said the mask politely, and the roan horse moved forward.

And his whilom adversary, so unexpectedly routed, stood in the road thinking, “It is not in Maine, but in a madhouse that he will find himself before he is much older! God pity him! . . . But where can Gaston be—and she?”

(3)

Could Pierre Chassin but have seen them they were sitting under the pine-stems, unconscious of the lurking death so recently withdrawn—sitting there very much as they had walked thither, his left arm about her, her head on his breast; only now she held, with her own two hands, that one hand of his fast against her, as if she feared it would slip away again. Here was grass, a little distance from the pines, and Zéphyr cropped it, and for a long while the brisk, tearing noise of his browsing, the jingle of his bridle, and the sough of the wind above them was all that they could hear . . . since the hour was too solemn, too wonderful, for further speech.

For they both knew now, if not all, at least the most vital facts about each other. Now, for Valentine, the seven years’ silence was explained—and could scarcely have had a more honourable justification. Now the idea that Gaston had not cared whether she were dead or alive seemed blasphemy. How false, too, had been all those past conceptions of what their meeting would be like, if ever they met again! Nothing remained now of old wrongs, however deep, nothing of old unhappinesses, however real, nothing of old mistakes. All these were not, before the miracle of his personal presence, the marvel of being in his arms. It was as if hoar frost should change, under a stronger sun than winter’s, into the spring’s diamonds of unimaginable joy.

Here, as she rested on his heart, came on her, after the wonder, the peace of Paradise. For this the watchers seemed to have been planted; to this goal under the pine-trees they ran up. Take her heart’s desire from her! why, they had given it! She would never know how nearly it had been snatched away as soon as given. . . .