'Nonsense, Marie,' and Nicholas gently released her arms. 'I have come back to you to mend my ways, and must begin by paying my debts. Come, monsieur.'
CHAPTER VI
['GREEN AS A JADE CUP']
We passed the lacework of trees that bordered the skirts of the forest, Nicholas and I. On our left we could hear the drumming of a horse's hoofs growing fainter and more faint, as Jacques rode through the night to Rouvres. Marie's wailing came to us from behind, and Nicholas, who was walking doggedly along by the neck of my horse, stopped short suddenly and looked back. Turning in my saddle I looked back too, and there she was, in shadowy outline, at the ruined gates of the inn, and again her sobbing cry came to us.
'Morbleu!' I muttered to myself as I saw Nicholas' face twitch in the moonlight; 'I must end this at once,' and then sharply to my companion, 'What stays you? Pick your heart up, man! One would think you go into the bottomless pit, you walk with so tender a foot!'
'I don't know what is in the bottomless pit, monsieur, and, like other fools, would probably go there on the run; but I do know the mercy of M. de Gomeron, and—I am not wont to be so, but my heart is as heavy as lead.'
'Very well; then let us go back. It is like to be a fool's errand with such a guide.'
My words, and the tone they were uttered in, touched him on the raw, and he swung round.
'I will go, monsieur; this way—to the right.'
We turned sharply behind the silently waving arms of a hedge of hornbeam, and it was a relief to find that this cut away all further chance of seeing the pitiful figure at the gates of the inn. Nicholas drew the folds of his frayed cloak over his head, as if to shut out all sound, and hurried onwards—a tall figure, lank and dark, that flitted before me within the shadow of the hedgerow. My horse's knees were hidden by the undergrowth on either side of the winding track, that twined and twisted like a snake under the tangle of grass and weed. This waste over which we passed, grey-green in the moonlight, and swaying in the wind, rolled like a heaving, sighing sea to where it was brought up abruptly by the dark mass of the forest, standing up solidly against the sky as though it were a high coast line. As we forced our way onwards, the swish of the grass was as the churning of water at the bows of a boat, and one could well imagine that the long, shaking plashes of white, mottling the moving surface before us, was caused by the breaking of uneasy water into foam. Of a truth these white plashes were but marguerites.