The Baroness de Mélide watched the transaction in respectful silence, for she too took le sport very seriously, and had attended a course of lectures at a riding-school on the art of keeping and using harness. Her colour was now returning—that brilliant, delicate colour which so often accompanies dark red hair—and she gave a little sigh of resignation.
Colonel Gilbert looked at her, but said nothing. He seemed to admire her, in the same contemplative way that he had admired the moon rising behind the island of Capraja from the Place St. Nicholas in Bastia.
De Vasselot noted the sigh, and glanced sharply at her over the shoulder of the big charger.
“Of what are you thinking?” he said.
“Of the millennium, mon ami”
“The millennium?”
“Yes,” she answered, gathering the bridle; “when women shall perhaps be allowed to be natural. Our mothers played at being afraid—we play at being courageous.”
As she spoke she placed a neat foot in Colonel Gilbert's hand, who lifted her without effort to the saddle. De Vasselot mounted the Arab, and they rode slowly homewards by way of the Avenue de Longchamps, through the Porte Dauphine, and up that which is now the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, which was quiet enough at this time of day. The baroness was inclined to be silent. She had been more shaken than she cared to confess to two soldiers. Colonel Gilbert probably saw this, for he began to make conversation with de Vasselot.
“You do not come to Corsica,” he said.
“I have never been there—shall never go there,” answered de Vasselot. “Tell me—is it not a terrible place? The end of the world, I am told. My mother”—he broke off with a gesture of the utmost despair. “She is dead!” he interpolated—“always told me that it was the most terrible place in the world. At my father's death, more than thirty years ago, she quitted Corsica, and came to live in Paris, where I was born, and where, if God is good, I shall die.”