"It is there that I want you to swim—now, when you have rested."
"Too far," she sighed; "we could never get back."
"We should never come back," he announced with determination.
"Valentine? She will think I drown."
"She would prefer to bury you at La Chaumais?"
Leonie laughed.
"Are you ready?" he said, arresting further objections and crushing a word of endearment that rose to his lips. To be successful he must be matter-of-fact. Everything now depended on promptness and a cool head. He pulled a knotted string and lifted from the water a cork belt.
"You must run no risk of fatigue," he said, fitting it to her fragile form. "Now, let us start. Valentine will soon be on the qui vive."
Without demur she accepted his hand and leapt with him from the far side of the raft.
The sea stretched a sheet of silver under a sky of gauzy opal, shot with flame from the dozing sun; wind and tide were in their favour. Before long they had passed from the sight of the shore to the shade of the giant rock, whose railed summit, dedicated to Chateaubriand, seems to commune with and command the elements. Cezambre in the distance was as yet merely an apparent triangle of spikes jutting from mid ocean, but towards it they plied their way valiantly, two moving human dots, on the breast of the vast abyss. Once she laughed uproariously to relieve her happiness, but he checked her.