Not here, of course, but lower down, perhaps near St. Germains. No, not St. Germains,--there were too many people there,--but Melun, where the Seine was fringed thick with reeds and rushes, where in the dusk a determined woman might wade out from the bank till the current took her. The remembrance of a certain expedition to Melun rose suddenly before her. In a kind of anguish she saw again its little red and white houses, sprinkled on the slope of its low hill, and the river below winding between its willows and poplars, amid meadows of buttercups, scattered with great posies of maythorn. She and he had sat together under one of the may trees, and Mariette, poor Mariette, with Antoine at her feet, had sat under another close at hand. And Mariette had sung in her thin, reedy voice the song with its ever-recurring refrain-- "Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne Me rendra fou, oui, me rendra fou." Annette shuddered and then was still. It must have been a very deep wound, inflicted with a jagged instrument, which had brought her to this pass, which had lit this stony defiance in her soft eyes. For though it was evident that she had rebelled against life, it was equally evident that she was not of the egotistic temperament of those who rebel or cavil, or are discontented. She looked equable, feminine, the kind of woman who would take life easily, bend to it naturally, "As the grass grows on the weirs"; who might, indeed, become a tigress in defence of her young, but then what woman would not? But it is not only in defence of its babes of flesh and blood that the protective fierceness of woman can be aroused. There are spiritual children, ideals, illusions, romantic beliefs in others, the cold-blooded murder of which arouses the tigress in some women. Perhaps it had been so with Annette. For the instinct to rend and tear was upon her, and it had turned savagely against herself. Strange how in youth our first crushing defeat in the experiment of living brings with it the temptation of suicide! Did we then imagine, in spite of all we saw going on round us, that life was to be easy for _us_, painless for _us_, joyful for _us_, so that the moment the iron enters our soul we are so affronted that we say, "If this is life, we will have none of it"? Several passers-by had cast a backward glance at Annette. Presently some one stopped, with a little joyous exclamation. She was obliged to raise her eyes and return his greeting. She knew him, the eccentric, rich young Englishman who rode his own horses under a French name which no one believed was his own. He often came to her father's cabaret in the Rue du Bac. "Good morning, mademoiselle." "Good morning, M. Le Geyt." He came and leaned on the parapet beside her. "Are you not riding to-day?" "Riding to-day! Ride on the Flat! Is it likely? Besides, I had a fall yesterday schooling. My neck is stiff."