in the dark. Marie."

As he studied the writing, the old woman's mumblings became more
articulate. She was saying, "'Twas the child Conan should have brought
it an hour ago. But he is ever good-for-nothing, and forgot it."

Antoine looked at the sun, which was already westering, and perceived
that he must set out to meet Marie in half-an-hour. He got up and walked
slowly towards the sandy shore of the little inlet, wide and wet at low
tide, on the other side of which lay his own home. He walked slowly, but
he felt as if he were hurrying at a headlong pace. The thought kept
going round and round in his brain like a little torturing wheel, which
nothing would stop, that after all Marie _was_ going to the Dwarf's
Valley this evening, just as Geoffroi had said. Geoffroi's words were
still sounding in his ears, and his right hand was clenched, as he had
clenched it when the whirlwind of anger first convulsed him.

He entered his own cottage, hardly knowing what he did.

Old Aimee was bending over the cauldron, cutting up cabbage for the
soup.

"Good-bye, Grandmother," he said. "I am going to the Dwarf's Valley."

Aimee looked up at him out of her keen old eyes.

"And why are you going there in the dark?" she said, "'Tis an evil
meeting place after the sun has set."

"Why do you say meeting place, Grandmother Whom do you think I am going
to meet there?"

"The blessed Saints protect you," she replied, "less you should meet
Whom you would not."

Antoine strode out again, without saying more. He fancied he was in the
Valley of Dwarfs already, about to meet Marie. He saw the weird, gnarled
trunks of trees on either hand, that grew among--sometimes writhed
around--the huge fantastic boulders: the dark cave-like recesses, formed
strangely between and under them where the dwarfs lay hidden to emerge
at dusk: the sides of the ravine towering up stern and gloomy on either
hand: and high above all against the sky, the grey stone cross at which
he was to meet Marie. He saw it all as if he were there, and the ground
beneath him, as he tramped on, seemed unreal. Twilight was already
falling over the rocks and the grey sea: there were no lights in the
village, except such as shone here and there in a cottage window: the
distant roar of the sea was heard, as it dashed over a long line of
rocks two or three miles out, but there was hardly any other sound: the
place indeed seemed God-abandoned, like some long-forgotten strand of a