"We are cousins," she suggested demurely. "At your service." "Then I pray you help me to get up." Had Ronnay de Maurel been asked to hoist up on his shoulder a cannon which weighed a couple of tons, he would have felt less puzzled how to proceed than he did now, when an exquisite thing which looked as if it might break at the slightest touch asked him to help her to raise herself from the ground. He was, as usual, dressed in blouse and rough breeches. He had no cap on his head, and his feet were encased in heavy riding-boots. For a second or two he looked round him with pathetic helplessness, as if he expected the dwellers of the forest to come to his aid in this awful dilemma. But no one came, and the lovely creature, whose tiny bare foot looked like an exquisite flower, was appealing--oh, so piteously, for help! "Alas, Monsieur!" she said, "an you'll not come to my assistance, I shall have to wait till some chance passer-by prove more full of pity than you. It is six kilometres from here to the Chateau of Courson and I am breakfastless." Her voice--the tone of which appeared to Ronnay de Maurel like the singing of a nightingale--broke in her plucky effort to keep back the tears of mortification and of pain. He suddenly felt like a brute to stand by and see her suffer so. "I wish I could help you, Mademoiselle," he said tentatively, "but I am so clumsy, so rough. I should spoil your gown and...." "Eh, _mon cousin_," she retorted, "I would sooner have a spoiled gown than remain here till noonday. Give me the support of your arm and I will try to raise myself. Perhaps, with the aid of your stick, I might then be able to hobble home." Thus admonished, Ronnay de Maurel, stooping low, held out his arm, and the exquisite creature placed one tiny hand upon it, then coolly bade him hold the other. Mechanically he obeyed, thinking all the while that the lovely fingers--slender and velvety like the petals of a lily--would be crushed to pieces in his grasp. But they remained unscathed, and every succeeding moment he felt her hold tightening upon his arm, whilst a delicious fragrance as of spring air laden with blossom seemed to come from her entire person, and the soft tendrils of her fair hair brushed against his cheek like a fairy's kiss. "I don't think that I shall be able to walk," said Fernande ruefully, as she clung more firmly with both her hands to his arm. "Will you try?" he suggested. "Lean on me and let me support you. Don't be afraid. Perhaps if you held the stick with one hand and...." "And," she interposed decisively, in perfectly matter-of-fact tone, "if you will put your arm round my waist, I think that perhaps...." He did as he was told, and felt the whole weight of her lissom body against his arm. "There, now," she said, "if I can put my foot to the ground...."