Luc leant against the tree-trunk, gazing across the blackness. For the second time they were alone together in the cold and dark with a dead child between them; it seemed to him a symbol of what separated them and yet what brought them together: death and sorrow--but endeavour and exaltation. The enigma that had seemed to have poorly solved itself in the house of M. de Richelieu was now suddenly again unsolvable. Was she not brave and kind?--what she had appeared in Bohemia--had not all his estimates been utterly wrong? And what was the meaning of this constant crossing of their lives--connected always with death? He put his hand wearily to his forehead; her voice came up from the ground, near his feet. “These fields are not new to me, Monsieur de Vauvenargues. I have slept under these trees before. I used to watch the sheep here when I was a little ragged child. Sometimes I used to go to Aix with milk, and see you, Monsieur le Marquis, riding with your brother. Then I had another name--it was before I went to Paris.” “So you are from Provence?” he murmured. “Yes. Here I was born, homeless, nameless; and here I shall die, homeless, nameless also. I have done what I wished to, and I regret nothing.” Luc could not speak; that their lives should have been so twisted together strangely troubled him. She seemed to divine his silence. “I could not help this. For Mademoiselle de Séguy’s sake, I would have done anything it had not happened.” The rosy face of Clémence with her devoted eyes sprang out of the blackness to confront Luc; he shivered and put his hands over his forehead. “Why do you not speak?” came the weak voice from his feet. “Are you thinking of the future?” “Yes,” said Luc, with an effort. He felt that she shuddered. “Are you--afraid?” she asked, in a tone of horror. “Yes,” said Luc simply. The terror of that admission filled the darkness. Luc set his back against the tree. He could feel the fine rain on his hands and dripping from his hat; he coughed and shivered. “In Bohemia we were on the heights,” came Carola’s voice; “but this is the lowlands, and there is not one star.” Luc was thinking again of Paris, and the river, and the beggar on the quay, and of Clémence as she had stood in her father’s hall to say good-bye to him with soft lamplight over her face that seemed to express something never to be put into words, and her gown, lace, perfume, and pale colours. “Speak, Monsieur le Marquis, speak!” the woman’s voice implored. “I am here with a dead child.” “She _is_ dead, then?” asked Luc. “I cannot warm her or make her move.” The answer was unsteady and wistful. “Yes, she is dead.” Luc was thinking now of his home, of his family waiting for him, of their wonder at his absence. He recalled the work he had meant to do to-night and the letters he had intended to write. He was now as cut off from that as if he had been swept to another world.