And yet he did not blench, nor would he; being half French and of good blood, at a time when good French blood ran the more generously for a half century of war. He would not have blenched, even if he had not, from the sunlit view of God's earth and heaven which lay before his eyes, drawn other thoughts than that one of his own littleness and insignificance. As this view of vale and mountain had once before lifted his judgment above the miasma of a cruel superstition, so it raised him now above creeping fears and filled him with confidence in something more stable than magistrates or mobs. Love, like the sunlight, shone aslant the dark places of the prospect and filled them with warmth. Sacrifice for her he loved took on the beauty of the peaks, cold but lovely; and hope and courage, like the clear blue of the vault above, looked smiling down on the brief dangers and the brief troubles of man's making. The clock of St. Gervais was striking eleven as, still in exalted mood, he turned his back on the view and entered the house in the Corraterie. He had entered on his return from his fruitless visit to Blondel, and had satisfied himself that Anne was safe. Doubtless she was still safe, for the house was quiet. In his new mood he was almost inclined to quarrel with this. In the ardour of his passion he would gladly have seen the danger immediate, the peril present, that he might prove to her how much he loved her, how deeply he felt for her, what he would dare for her. To die on the hearth of the living-room, at her feet and saving her, seemed for a moment the thing most desirable--the purest happiness! That was denied him. The house was quiet, as in a morning it commonly was. So quiet that he recalled without effort the dreams which he had dreamed on that spot, and the thoughts which had filled his heart to bursting a few hours before. The great pot was there, simmering on its hook; and on the small table beside it, the table that Basterga and Grio occupied, stood a platter with a few dried herbs and a knife fresh from her hand. Claude made sure that he was unobserved, and raising the knife to his lips, kissed the haft gently and reverently, thinking what she had suffered many a day while using it! What fear, and grief and humiliation, and---- He stood erect, his face red: he listened intently. Upstairs, breaking the long silence of the house, opening as it were a window to admit the sun, a voice had uplifted itself in song. The voice had some of the tones of Anne's voice, and something that reminded him of her voice. But when had he heard her sing? When had aught so clear, so mirthful, or so young fallen from her as this; this melody, laden with life and youth and abundance, that rose and fell and floated to his ears through the half-open door of the staircase?