She stood for a second, looking up at him. The glow of the fire brought out every line of his face, so fine and true and serene, and yet the face of a man who knew what he had undertaken, what was before him, for there was a kind of awe in his expression, and yet an exaltation; his lips were delicately compressed, his nostrils delicately distended, and his eyes were wild and dark. He was looking over the huddled form of the child in front of him that he held to his bosom with his right hand; his gaze went beyond Carola and beyond the flames. She thought he had forgotten she was there. She mounted and brought her horse alongside his. “Ah, Madame,” he murmured, with a start. They rode together out of the light of the flames. CHAPTER XIII CLÉMENCE The lantern failed, and the moonlight was often obscured, or completely blotted out by the passing sullen clouds. Luc’s right arm was stiff about the heavy child and his left hand cold on the bridle; his very blood was chill. It seemed to him that the creeping bitterness of the night was more intense than all the hurricane snows of Bohemia. He seldom moved his head, and his body was cramped in one position with the weight of the little girl against it; but his mind had never been clearer, more alert, more active. Picture after picture flashed before him with agonizing vividness--all that had gone to make his life since his return from Bohemia to his last parting, a few hours ago, with Clémence in her father’s house formed and faded with mechanical repetition, and against the background of their visionary memories raced his thoughts. It came to this: a little while ago he had been happy with the ecstatic happiness of youth--of proud, ambitious youth; he had seen honourable labour behind, honourable labour ahead; he had felt love rest against his heart, and seen glory hovering very near. And now--he was riding through the dark, with disease, corruption, perhaps death, in his arms; riding away from the home to which he had lately pledged himself, away from Clémence and all she stood for--with a woman associated with humiliation and sadness for his companion--with great chances that he would never be able to turn back again to those things he had left behind. Yet he was conscious all the time of the highest exaltation perhaps that he had ever known--an intermittent sensation, now weaker, now stronger, that, however, held his heart up steadily. The night seemed endless. Only once did they meet anyone--some peasants in a cart, who stopped and seemed to wonder at them. “We carry the plague!” cried Carola as they galloped past, and they heard the men’s cries of terror and supplications to God. The child began to stir in Luc’s arms. He himself felt faint; the night wind brought on his cough, which had troubled him since his last campaign. He tried to comfort the little girl; she became still again, and, he thought, heavier.