"I believe I'm there!" he said, with a laugh. "The worst that can happen to us is to get our feet wet, for our craft leaks a trifle. But haven't we a saucepan? Oh, blessings on that useful utensil! Almost as soon as I set eyes upon it, I remembered that people use those articles to bale out the bottoms of leaky boats. Why, there was bound to be a boat in the Landes woods! How was it I never thought of that? But of course Dalbrèque made use of her to cross the Seine! And, as she made water, he brought a saucepan."
"Then Rose Andrée ...?" asked Hortense.
"Is a prisoner on the other bank, on the Jumièges peninsula. You see the famous abbey from here."
They ran aground on a beach of big pebbles covered with slime.
"And it can't be very far away," he added. "Dalbrèque did not spend the whole night running about."
A tow-path followed the deserted bank. Another path led away from it. They chose the second and, passing between orchards enclosed by hedges, came to a landscape that seemed strangely familiar to them. Where had they seen that pool before, with the willows overhanging it? And where had they seen that abandoned hovel?
Suddenly both of them stopped with one accord:
"Oh!" said Hortense. "I can hardly believe my eyes!"
Opposite them was the white gate of a large orchard, at the back of which, among groups of old, gnarled apple-trees, appeared a cottage with blue shutters, the cottage of the Happy Princess.
"Of course!" cried Rénine. "And I ought to have known it, considering that the film showed both this cottage and the forest close by. And isn't everything happening exactly as in The Happy Princess? Isn't Dalbrèque dominated by the memory of it? The house, which is certainly the one in which Rose Andrée spent the summer, was empty. He has shut her up there."