“Good-bye,” she said. A great faintness came over Luc; he held himself erect with difficulty; he felt that something was going out of his life that would never come into it again, as he had felt last night that he was riding away from a world he would never enter more. Ambition, resolution, fear were all lost in a sudden anguish of regret. “Good-bye,” repeated the woman. “Good-bye,” answered Luc. A sense of the inevitable held him passive. She went out quietly; the latch clicked into place. He turned his head towards the window and saw her pass the white wall of the hospice; she was looking down, and he noticed that the black coil of hair at the nape of her neck had become loosened and was slipping free in long ringlets. She passed and was gone. He stood for a while gazing at the blank window, then walked to the inner door and leant against it heavily. The wall seemed transparent; it was as if he could see the chamber within, the pallet bed, the little corpse with the ring hidden in her shroud. The convent bell ceased. The door through which Carola had gone opened, and the gardener and a boy entered, carrying between them a rough wood coffin, of a ghastly smallness. “Eh, Monsieur, we are late for breakfast,” said the man. The boy nodded towards the fire. “But Monseigneur has put the soup on, and it is boiling over.” PART III THE QUEST TRIUMPHANT “Quand je parle de vertu, je ne parle point de ces qualités imaginaires qui n’appartiennent pas à la nature humaine: je parle de cette force et de cette grandeur de l’âme, qui, comparée aux sentiments des esprits faibles, méritent les noms que je leur donne.”--_Discours sur le caractère des différent siècles_, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES. “Insensés que nous sommes, nous craignons toujours d’être dupes ou de l’activité, ou de la gloire, ou de la vertu! Mais qui fait plus de dupes véritables que l’oubli de ces mêmes choses? qui fait des promesses plus trompeures que l’oisiveté?”--_Discours sur la gloire._ CHAPTER I THE FATHER “My son is coming home to-morrow,” said the old Marquis. Mademoiselle de Séguy drew the white fur of her hood closer together under her chin. “Yes,” she answered; “it has seemed a long time.” “Two months,” said M. de Vauvenargues, “two months. He saved Aix, you know.” “Oh yes,” replied the girl vaguely. “Oh yes.” They were walking up and down the hard gravel paths of the garden of Luc’s home in Aix; a faint film of frost lay over the water in the fountain basin, but the air was clear and bright, and through the damp rotting leaves on the flower-beds the first white and green of the snowdrops showed. “Why has he been away so long?” asked Clémence again. “He was out of the plague in a few days.”