The power to think and to feel came back to her. She escaped from the chaos of things to a consciousness of self, and of that other self beside her. The blind life-instinct that had carried her over the hills into the twilight, gave place to a quick, spiritual dread of the man at her side. She had not seen Gaillard desert Isoult, and leave the girl to be trampled under foot. But her own being had a passionate loathing for the man, a loathing so great that it tempted her to throw herself from her horse. Her broken and unconscious body would be nothing to Gaillard, and he would leave her as a drunkard would leave a broken and empty jar. Gaillard, alert and masterful, reined in suddenly as though to listen. He had caught some sound following them out of the dusk, but the trampling of their own horses had smothered it, and robbed it of significance. Gaillard kept his hold of the halter of Denise’s horse, and towered over her as he turned in the saddle to look back. The ridge of a hill ran bleak and sharp against a stretch of yellow sky. And outlined against this streak of gold came the figure of a man riding a black horse. He was not two hundred paces away, and Gaillard saw him shake his sword. Denise also saw that solitary rider black against the sunset, and the heart leapt in her, and beat more quickly. Gaillard kicked in the spurs, dragging Denise’s rough nag after him. “Hold fast,” he said, “if that fellow is after us, he will not rob a Gascon of his supper.” They were galloping again, rushing on into a vague and dolorous dusk. The wind swept Denise’s hair, and once a shout followed after them, but Gaillard kept her horse at the gallop, and Denise was at the mercy of the two strong beasts, and of that yet stronger beast, man. A streak of dull silver parted the darkness in front of them. Before Denise had understood the nature of the thing before them, water was splashed over her, and their horses were swimming the river. Gaillard had not spoken a word. When they were out of the muddy shallows and on the firm ground beyond, he reined in, turned the horses, and looked back over the river. An indistinct figure loomed out of the dusk with a scamper of hoofs, and the heavy breathing of a hard-ridden horse. Gaillard had drawn his sword. He lifted his helmet, and putting it on the point of his sword, stood in the stirrups, holding sword and helmet high above his head. Denise was near enough to see his face in the dusk. It was half fierce, and half amused, yet wholly confident, the face of a strong man and a libertine whose strength made him take a bully’s joy in cheating weaker men of their women. “Hallo, there!” The pursuer had drawn in on the farther bank, with his horse’s hoofs sucking the spongy grass. “Keep over there, my friend, if you value a sound skull. I am not to be meddled with when I ride with a gay lady.” There was a splashing of hoofs in the shallows, and a voice came over the river.