quiet sea
traversed in the night, sad in the passage of it, but featureless--and
it had proved him right! It was to Nevil Beauchamp as if the spirit of
his old passion woke up again to glorious hopeful morning when he stood
in Renee's France.

Tourdestelle enjoyed the aristocratic privilege of being twelve miles
from the nearest railway station. Alighting here on an evening of clear
sky, Beauchamp found an English groom ready to dismount for him and
bring on his portmanteau. The man said that his mistress had been twice
to the station, and was now at the neighbouring Chateau Dianet. Thither
Beauchamp betook himself on horseback. He was informed at the gates
that Madame la Marquise had left for Tourdestelle in the saddle only ten
minutes previously. The lodge-keeper had been instructed to invite him
to stay at Chateau Dianet in the event of his arriving late, but it
would be possible to overtake madame by a cut across the heights at a
turn of the valley. Beauchamp pushed along the valley for this visible
projection; a towering mass of woodland, in the midst of which a narrow
roadway, worn like the track of a torrent with heavy rain, wound upward.
On his descent to the farther side, he was to spy directly below in the
flat for Tourdestelle. He crossed the wooded neck above the valley, and
began descending, peering into gulfs of the twilight dusk. Some paces
down he was aided by a brilliant half-moon that divided the whole
underlying country into sharp outlines of dark and fair, and while
endeavouring to distinguish the chateau of Tourdestelle his eyes were
attracted to an angle of the downward zigzag, where a pair of horses
emerged into broad light swiftly; apparently the riders were disputing,
or one had overtaken the other in pursuit. Riding-habit and plumed hat
signalized the sex of one. Beauchamp sung out a gondolier's cry. He
fancied it was answered.

He was heard, for the lady turned about, and as he rode down, still
uncertain of her, she came cantering up alone, and there could be no
uncertainty.

Moonlight is friendless to eyes that would make sure of a face long
unseen. It was Renee whose hand he clasped, but the story of the years
on her, and whether she was in bloom, or wan as the beams revealing her,
he could not see.

Her tongue sounded to him as if it were loosened without a voice. 'You
have come. That storm! You are safe!'

So phantom-like a sound of speech alarmed him. 'I lost no time. But
you?'