“Alixe! Courtoise! Up and out with me! Burn ye not? Stifle ye not in this dim hole? Courtoise, is our old sailing-boat still in its mooring? Let us fare forth, all three, and set out upon the wintry sea! Let us feel this January wind pull and strain at the ropes! Let us watch the foamy waves pile up before and behind us—” “Mon Dieu!” “Mademoiselle, it is impossible. The boat lies on the beach; two days’ work would not fit her for the water.” Laure stamped angrily on the floor. “Something, then, something! I will get out into the cold, into the snow; I will move, I will feel, I will breathe again!” It was so much the wild, free Laure, it had in it so much her old-time magnetism of comradeship, so much the spirit of the dead Gerault, desirous of action, that Alixe and Courtoise were drawn irresistibly into her mood. Both of them moved forward, while Alixe cried gayly: “The hawks! Come, we will ride!” “The hawks!” echoed Laure. “Run, Courtoise, and get the horses, while Alixe and I go don our riding-garb and jess the birds!” Without a moment’s hesitation, rather with a throb of pleasure, Courtoise ran obediently away toward the stables, while the young women hurried to their rooms. In twenty minutes the wild trio were dashing across the lowered drawbridge, all well mounted, hawk on wrist, spur at heel, with Laure in the lead. Down the road for the space of a mile they went, and then struck off to the snowy moor. They rode long and they rode hard, finding scarce a single quarry, but letting their pent-up spirits out in this free and healthful exercise. When they came in again to the Castle courtyard, it was in starry darkness; and not one of the three but felt a new strength to resist the dead life of the Castle. Perhaps, had Courtoise known how Lenore had quietly wept away the afternoon in her solitude and loneliness, he had not appeared at evening meat with air so vigorous, eye so bright, and appetite so ready. Lenore, however, was never known to make a plaint; and she came to table with her cheeks hardly paler than usual, though her downcast eyes were shrunken with tears, and their lids were tinged with feverish red. Men say that it is one of the irrevocable blessings that Time should move as surely as he does. But when the hours, nay, the minutes, lag away as drearily as they did in Le Crépuscule that winter, one feels no gratitude to Time; but rather a resentment that his immortality should be so dead-alive. Yet winter did pass, however slowly. In March the frozen chains of the prisoned earth were riven. Streams began to flow fast and full. The snow melted and soaked into the rich, black soil, making it ready for the seed. The doors of the peasants’ huts were opened to the sun and rain. Flocks of storks began to fly northward on their return from the Nile to their unsettled fatherland. Spring caught the earth in a tender embrace; and wherever her warm breath touched the soil, a flower appeared, to mark the kiss.