In the girl’s dark eyes de Sancerre could see a protest growing as he spoke.
“Nay, señor,” she murmured, turning her gaze from his to watch the distant lightning as it flashed across the waters from the black clouds which covered the storm’s retreat. “My life has been so strange I fear I may not speak as other maidens would. But why should I not confess the truth? My love for you is not a forest growth. The saints forgive me, I loved you at Versailles! If in this awful wilderness you’re dearer to my heart than when, at court, you hurt my pride and showed my heart itself, ’tis not my fickleness which is at fault. I’ve loved none other, señor, in my life.”
“You were betrothed!” exclaimed de Sancerre, impulsively, a man rather than a courtier at the moment.
“’Tis a story for another hour than this,” said Doña Julia, softly. “Don Josef! Mother Mary be good to him! I always hated him, señor—although my hand was his. But look how the moon breaks through above those clouds! The storm is over, and the night grows clear. Shall we launch our raft again? I fear the forest, señor, more than yonder stream.”
“Nay, I dare not float at night, ma chère” answered de Sancerre, smoothing the raven hair from her white forehead as her head rested upon his shoulder, and they watched the fickle night change its garb of black, fringed with fire, for the silvery costume vouchsafed by the full moon. “I fear I might steal past my captain in the dark.”
Suddenly he pressed her face, splendid in its beauty as the moon caressed it, to his breast, while he gazed across his shoulder at the dripping forest with eyes large with sudden fear.
“God in heaven! There it comes again!”
Against his will, the words forced themselves from de Sancerre’s parched lips.
“What is it, señor?” whispered Doña Julia, trembling at the horror in his voice.
“A white, misshapen thing,” he muttered, hoarsely. “I’ve seen it once before. It lies upon the ground beneath a tree.”