I longed, yet feared, to meet Marie. I felt my bridle hand shiver as I thought of her, and, so thinking, I all unconsciously slackened pace, and dropped behind the others, letting my horse go slower and slower until he barely walked. It was at this moment that I became possessed of an intense feeling that the thoughts of the woman I loved were with me. I involuntarily glanced to my right, and there, as I live, at the edge of the purple shadow, where a lean glade opened and stretched out, long and white, I saw her stand. It was no dream of fancy. No fever of the brain. She stood there, I say, at the fringe of the glade, where the light and darkness joined, with the gold of her hair all shining like a glory. She was looking straight at me, with that in her glance I had never seen before. It was not love nor hate, but an infinite pity, that shone in her eyes, and then her lips seemed to move in speech, and--she was gone. I drew rein at the spot where she stood. It was not ten paces from me. I peered into the quaking shadows, but my glance met nothing except the endless lines of hoary trunks, that stretched like pillars along the dim aisles of the forest. Here and there, past the gaps in the boughs that arched overhead, I saw the blood light of the dying sunset shining as through the stained glass of some old minster window, a light that made the darkness yet more dark, and flung strange, awesome shadows on the still scene upon which it shone. “Marie!” I called out in a low voice, “Marie!” But there was no answer except the mockery of the echoes. “Marie--Marie!” they gibed from behind the haggard trees. “Marie--Marie!” they whispered from the wan branches. The very air was full of her name. I turned, sick at heart, from those voices that spoke to me of her. Echoes--not they? They were the long-dead people of the wood come back in that shivering twilight--sprite and elf and goblin--and they had fashioned of their cunning a phantom to make me a plaything and a sport. Slowly I pushed my horse a little way into the wood, my eyes here, there, and everywhere. The dry undergrowth snapped and crackled beneath his hoofs, and from a bent and twisted bough overhead a huge owl, startled by the sound, fled with flapping wings, and a dismal hoot, into the deep of the forest. I had totally forgotten my companions. In the nervous state to which I was reduced, I know not how far I might have gone on, but now I heard my name called out again and again, as Marcilly and Badehorn galloped back to seek me, and, brought to the moment by their shouts, I came out and joined them. “_Cap de Diou!_” exclaimed Jean, “as our friend Ponthieu would say, this is no season for woodland flowers, Gaspard, nor are we here to gather posies for our sweethearts. Have you a mind to spend the night in Russy woods?”