To this query he made no reply, but started on his way. It was six kilometres to Courson, through the woods first, and then across the fields. To Ronnay de Maurel ever afterwards it seemed as if the distance had been less than one. Leaving the pool on his right, he struck the footpath among the trees, treading softly and warily on the carpet of leaves and moss, lest his clumsy, dragging gait should cause her pain. She lay quite quiescent in his arms, holding the sheaf of bluebells so that it lay between her face and his. The dewy petals brushed against his cheek and mouth, and he was conscious of the delicious fragrance which filled his nostrils and of the cool dewdrops which moistened his lips. Her face he could not see, only the pellucid tendrils of her hair, as the soft breeze that murmured through the woods made them flutter in the sunshine. And he could see the little foot, half swathed in its gossamer bandage, each delicate toe so like the petal of a rose. He felt neither weight nor fatigue; he would have walked thus through life, thinking that it had suddenly become marvellously fair. Once or twice he asked her if she was comfortable, and she always answered: "Very comfortable, I thank you!" But she never asked him if he were fatigued. She knew that he was not. Once, when he put the question, he was not far from Courson, and the wood was already far behind, and through the veil of bluebells he could just see that her eyes were closed. He thought that she slept. From the earth close to his feet a lark rose, singing its joyous anthem, and fluttered upwards into the heavenly blue above. III It took Ronnay de Maurel two hours to reach the village of Courson. The chateau was half a kilometre further on. Never had he cursed its circular, pointed roofs as heartily as he did to-day. He would have liked to push them to the outermost confines of the earth. "Where are we now?" Fernande asked softly. "Very near home," he replied. "I must have been asleep." "I hope you have." "And you are not tired?" "No, I am not tired," he said curtly. All the while that he had tramped with his burden through the woods and across the fields, he had felt contented with only the squirrels and the birds around him to mock him for his heavy gait, his stained blouse and muddy boots. The sight of the first cottage of Courson suddenly took all the zest out of his spirit. Self-consciousness returned, and with it his full measure of wrath against his kinsfolk, whom of a truth he had no mind to meet again--not while his fatigue, of which he suddenly became conscious, and the additional mudstains on his clothes after the long tramp, placed him at such obvious disadvantage. Their presence, he felt, would jar upon his mood to a degree which he felt he could not endure.