"I had not seen you for four years—and yet!"
"You saw her then only for a few days—and she was so young!"
"What are days or years? Things lie deep in us till some great moment, and then they spring into life and are ours for ever. When I kissed King Louis' hand I knew that I loved my king; when De Montespan's. I hated, and shall hate always. When I first saw this English girl I waked from youth, I was born again into the world. I had no doubts, I have none now."
"And the man?"
"One knows one's enemy even as the other. There is no way but this,
Dollier. He is the enemy of my king, and he is greatly in my debt.
Remember the Spaniards' country!"
He laid a hand upon his sword. The face of the priest was calm and grave, but in his eyes was a deep fire. At heart he was a soldier, a loyalist, a gentleman of France. Perhaps there came to him then the dreams of his youth, before a thing happened which made him at last a servant of the Church after he had been a soldier of the king.
Presently the song of the voyageurs grew less, the refrain softened and passed down the long line, and, as it were, from out of far mists came the muffled challenge:
"Qui vive! Qui vive! in the dawn."
Then a silence fell once more. But presently from out of the mists there came, as it were, the echo of their challenge:
"Qui vive! Qui vive! in the dawn."