sily, the beautiful gray shadow all about her. She
had never been so far from home in all her life, except to that one
Kermesse at Mechlin. But she was not afraid.

With the movement, and the air, and the sense that she was going to him,
which made her happy even in her misery, something of the old, sweet,
lost fancies came to her.

She smiled at the stars through her tears, and as the poplars swayed and
murmured in the wind, they looked to her like the wings and the swords
of a host of angels.

Her way lay out through the forest, and in that sweet green woodland she
was not afraid--no more afraid than the fawns were.

At Boitsfort she shrank a little, indeed. Here there were the open-air
restaurants, and the cafe gardens all alight for the pleasure-seekers
from the city; here there were music and laughter, and horses with brass
bells, and bright colors on high in the wooden balconies, and below among
the blossoming hawthorn hedges. She had to go through it all, and
she shuddered a little as she ran, thinking of that one priceless,
deathless forest day when he had kissed her first.

But the pleasure-people were all busied with their mirth and mischief,
and took no notice of the little gray figure in the starry night. She
went on along the grassy roads, under the high arching trees, with the
hoot of the owls and the cry of the rabbits on the stillness.

At Groenendael, in the heart of the forest midnight was striking as she
entered the village. Every one was asleep. The lights were all out The
old ruined priory frowned dark under the clouds.

She shivered a little again, and began to feel chill and tired, yet did
not dare to knock at any one of the closed house doors--she had no money.

So she walked on her first ten unknown miles, meeting a few people only,
and being altogether unmolested--a small gray figure, trotting in two
little wooden shoes.

They thought her a peasant going to a fair or a lace mill, and no one did
her more harm than to wish her good night in rough Flemish.

When the dawn began to whiten above the plains of the east, she saw an
empty cow-shed filled with hay; she was a little tired, and lay down and
rested an hour or two, as a young lamb might have lain on the dried
clover, for she knew that she must keep her strength and husband her
power, or never reach across the dreary length of the foreign land to
Paris.

But by full sunrise she was on her way again, bathing her face in a brook
a