I had my pistol ready, and looked sharply to right and left, but saw no one. Then, taking care to walk in the middle of the road, I pushed forward at a good pace until I was well away from the inn. I glanced around from time to time, but saw no sign that I was followed nor heard any sound of pursuing footsteps. So telling myself at last that my fears were groundless, I leaped the ditch at the side of the road and retraced my steps, until I came again to the hedge back of the inn. From this I had but to follow the course of the brook, here the merest thread of water, and at the end of ten minutes I was back again at my starting-point. I stopped and bent over the hollow, when a soft hand rose and touched my cheek. “Is it you, M. de Tavernay?” asked a voice. “Oh, but I am glad! I was beginning to fear for you. What is that in your hand?” “It is food,” I answered, sitting down beside her and laughing with sheer joy. I drew my knife and severed loaf and fowl alike into two equal portions; then with the point of it drew the corks and placed the bottles carefully in a hollow of the grass, propping them upright with some little stones. “There!” I said, “the meal is served. I think we may dispense with grace, as we must with knives and forks.” She laughed delightedly as she took the portions I placed in her hands. “You are a wizard, M. de Tavernay,” she said. “I had expected at most a crust of bread, and you provide a feast.” “A feast is of value,” I pointed out, “only when it is in one’s stomach.” “Well, this shall soon be in mine,” she retorted. “Never in my life have I had such an appetite;” and she attacked the food with a vigor which it did me good to see. Nor was I behind her. Never before or since have I tasted a fowl so tender, bread so sweet, wine so satisfying. It was almost worth the privations we had undergone--it was nature’s compensation for that suffering. And our first hunger past, we took time to pause and chat a little. She had regained all her old spirit, and I am sure that for her, as for me, there was something fascinating and even dangerous in that moment. We forgot past sorrow and future peril; we forgot our present situation and the trials we must still encounter. The moon was rising again over the hills to the east, and revealed, just as it had done the night before, all the subtle delicacy of her beauty. What she was thinking of I know not, but my own thoughts flew back irresistibly to that hour in the garden--that sweet, swift-winged hour! “But was it only last night?” I murmured, not realizing that I spoke aloud until the words were uttered. “Indeed, it seems an age away!” she assented absently; and a sudden burst of joy glowed within me. “So you were thinking of it, too!” I cried, and tried to catch her hand. “Thinking of what?” she asked, drawing away from me. “Of the garden--of the few precious moments we passed together there,” I answered eagerly, my eyes on hers.