The day was breaking. Bands of violet along the horizon changed to pink and then to yellow. An awakening breeze passed like a shiver over the desert of sand and water, entered the cabin, and blew out the flickering light on the stone table. A cock in the distance welcomed the dawn. Thereupon, Renaud started to go to find his horse. The wallet was empty, too. "At the Icard farm," said he, "I can get what I need." "Do you suppose," said she, "that I intend to stay here all day like a captive goose?" "Is it all over, then?" said he, "and are you going away, too?" "To return may be a pleasure," said she, "but to remain is always a bore." She hummed in the gipsy language: "God gave thy mare no rein, Romichâl." "If you choose," she continued, "we will ride together till night. My horse has wings." "Very good," said Renaud. "Do you cross over to solid ground first. We will go together and get my horse. It will be a fine day." "And a good one! be sure of that!" said she, in her jerky voice, her voice which resembled _another's_. He went with her as far as the first of the stakes he had displaced, to point out the safe road to her, and when he saw her reach the edge of the swamp sixty feet beyond, he stooped and began to put the stakes in place one by one as he walked toward the firm ground. When he reached the last, he sprang to his feet with haggard eyes. Livette, with head thrown back, face turned toward the sky, eyes closed, mouth open, and grass mingled with her straying hair, was lying among the water-lilies, as if asleep, and in the throes of a bad dream. He also saw her two little clenched hands, above the water, clinging to the reeds. Transformed for a moment to a statue, Renaud soon aroused himself, and, bending over Livette, put his hands under her armpits. The poor body, buried in the thick, black ooze, came slowly forth, torn from its bed like the smooth stalk of a lily. When he had the poor body in his arms, inert and cold, perhaps dead,--the body of the poor, dear child, whose skirts, entangled in a net-work of long grasses, clung tightly to her dangling legs,--Renaud suddenly uttered a roar as of an enraged wild beast, and ran like a madman at the top of his speed to the nearest farm-house. XXIII THE PURSUIT One forgives only those whom one loves; only those who love forgive. Love at its apogee is naught but the power of inspiring forgiveness and bestowing it; and the social laws, which are of the mechanism of human justice, seem to have realized that fact, since they ignore the testimony of all those who would naturally be expected to love the culprit. Sympathy is simply a laying aside--in favor of those we love--of the implacable severity which we use but little in dealing with ourselves, and which attributes to those who pass judgment an unerring wisdom which is not human, or a self-confidence which is too much so.