“Where are you going?” spoke the youth shamefacedly. He had avoided Jeanne since the meeting at Toul.
“I go to Vaucouleurs,” she dared to say. “Good-by.”
“To Vaucouleurs?” repeated Lassois, turning to look at her as they left Colin behind. “But Aveline, Jeanne?”
“Did you think that I would leave her while she has need of me, Uncle Durand?” asked the maiden reproachfully.
“No, Jeanne; I knew that you would not. ’Twas a second only that I doubted.” Durand swung his goad over the oxen’s backs as he spoke, and the beasts swung into a trot.
But Jeanne turned for a last look at the valley she was leaving forever. Long she gazed at the red roofs of the village; at the ice bound river with its rushes rimed with frost; at the forest, bare and leafless; at the snow covered hills, and white shrouded meadows; at all the familiar objects hallowed 139 by association. Gazed until her tear-blinded eyes would permit her to look no more.
And so down the Valley of Colors for the last time passed Jeanne D’Arc.