And indeed the dawn was already beginning. The hollow of the sky was full of essential daylight, colourless and clean; and the valley underneath was flooded with a grey reflection. A few thin vapours clung in the coves of the forest or lay along the winding course of the river. The scene disengaged a surprising effect of stillness, which was hardly interrupted when the cocks began once more to crow among the steadings. Perhaps the same fellow who had made so horrid a clangour in the darkness not half-an-hour before, now sent up the merriest cheer to greet the coming day. A little wind went bustling and eddying among the tree-tops underneath the windows. And still the daylight kept flooding insensibly out of the east, which was soon to grow incandescent and cast up that red-hot cannon-ball, the rising sun. Denis looked out over all this with a bit of a shiver. He had taken her hand, and retained it in his almost unconsciously. “Has the day begun already?” she said; and then, illogically enough: “the night has been so long! Alas, what shall we say to my uncle when he returns?” “What you will,” said Denis, and he pressed her fingers in his. She was silent. “Blanche,” he said, with a swift, uncertain, passionate utterance, “you have seen whether I fear death. You must know well enough that I would as gladly leap out of that window into the empty air as lay a finger on you without your free and full consent. But if you care for me at all do not let me lose my life in a misapprehension; for I love you better than the whole world; and though I will die for you blithely, it would be like all the joys of Paradise to live on and spend my life in your service.” As he stopped speaking, a bell began to ring loudly in the interior of the house; and a clatter of armour in the corridor showed that the retainers were returning to their post, and the two hours were at an end. “After all that you have heard?” she whispered, leaning towards him with her lips and eyes. “I have heard nothing,” he replied. “The captain’s name was Florimond de Champdivers,” she said in his ear. “I did not hear it,” he answered, taking her supple body in his arms and covering her wet face with kisses. A melodious chirping was audible behind, followed by a beautiful chuckle, and the voice of Messire de Malétroit wished his new nephew a good morning. PROVIDENCE AND THE GUITAR CHAPTER I