After that, as may be guessed, we walked every day in the forest, making longer and longer excursions as my strength came back to me, and the nearer parts grew familiar. From early dawn, when I brought my love a posy of flowers, to late evening, when Fanchette hurried her from me, our days were passed in a long round of delight; being filled full of all beautiful things--love, and sunshine, and rippling streams, and green banks, on which we sat together under scented limes, telling one another all we had ever thought, and especially all we had ever thought of one another. Sometimes--when the light was low in the evening--we spoke of my mother; and once--but that was in the sunshine, when the bees were humming and my blood had begun to run strongly in my veins--I spoke of my great and distant kinsman, Rohan. But mademoiselle would hear nothing of him, murmuring again and again in my ear, ‘I have crossed, my love, I have crossed.’ Truly the sands of that hour-glass were of gold. But in time they ran out. First M. Francois, spurred by the restlessness of youth, and convinced that madame would for a while yield no further, left us, and went back to the world. Then news came of great events that could not fail to move us. The King of France and the King of Navarre had met at Tours, and embracing in the sight of an immense multitude, had repulsed the League with slaughter in the suburb of St. Symphorien. Fast on this followed the tidings of their march northwards with an overwhelming army of fifty-thousand men of both religions, bent, rumour had it, on the signal punishment of Paris. I grew--shame that I should say it--to think more and more of these things; until mademoiselle, reading the signs, told me one day that we must go. ‘Though never again,’ she added with a sigh, ‘shall we be so happy.’ ‘Then why go?’ I asked foolishly. ‘Because you are a man,’ she answered with a wise smile, ‘as I would have you be, and you need something besides love. To-morrow we will go.’ ‘Whither?’ I said in amazement. ‘To the camp before Paris,’ she answered. ‘We will go back in the light of day--seeing that we have done nothing of which to be ashamed--and throw ourselves on the justice of the King of Navarre. You shall place me with Madame Catherine, who will not refuse to protect me; and so, sweet, you will have only yourself to think of. Come, sir,’ she continued, laying her little hand in mine, and looking into my eyes, ‘you are not afraid?’ ‘I am more afraid than ever I used to be,’ I said trembling. ‘So I would have it,’ she whispered, hiding her face on my shoulder. ‘Nevertheless we will go.’