Yet she did not care. Under the blasphemous roof of her Aunt Clothilde she could not have remained. For, in verity, blasphemy had been spoken. Her father was loved and honoured by all the world; by her mother, by Uncle Gaspard, by Corinna, by Martin. And she herself—did she not know her father? Was there ever a man like him? The insulting words rang through her brain. She would have confronted terrors a million fold more grisly than these in order to escape from the blasphemer, whom she could never forgive—no, not for all the curés and abbés in Christendom. An intense little soul was that of Félise Fortinbras. It swept her irresistibly out of the unhallowed villa, with a handbag containing a nightgown, a toothbrush and a faded little photograph of her father and mother standing side by side in wedding garb, on the way to the dread, fascinating whirlpool of Paris, where dwelt the worshipped gods of her idolatry. And, as she sat in the comforting lee of the fat and unafraid peasant woman and her bundles and her children, she took herself to task for cowardice. The journey, under two hours, was but a trifle. Had it been to Brantôme, an all-night affair, she might have had reason for quailing. But to Paris it was practically but a step. . . . The Abbé Duloup spoke of going to Paris as her uncle spoke of going to Périgueux. Yet her heart thudded violently during the interminable half hour. And there was the grim possibility of the appearance of a pursuing Aunt Clothilde. She kept a fearful eye upon the doorway of the _salle d’attente_. At last the train rushed in, and there was clangour of luggage trucks and clamour of raucous voices announcing the train for Paris; and a flow of waiting people, among whom was her neighbour with her varied impedimenta, swept across the lines and scaled the heights of the carriages. By luck, in front of Félise loomed a compartment showing second class on the door panel and “_Dames seules_” on the window. She clambered in and sank into a seat. Who her lonely lady fellow-travellers were she could not afterwards remember; for she kept her eyes closed, absorbed in the adventure that still lay before her. Yet it was comforting to feel that as long as the train went on she was safe in this feminine sanctuary, free from depredations of marauding males.