De Guyon took his seat at the high table; the Abbé waddled out of the château and raised three fingers in benediction of the multitude; the musicians scraped as they had not scraped before; the feast opened with a flourish of trumpets and a lively babble of tongues. The girl who presided over it had a word and a look for everyone; the lieutenant had a word and a look only for her; the Abbé only for his plate. When the eating and drinking at length were done with (and the foresters had appetites which were to be measured only by hours), the masqueraders began their play in the park, some making believe to be fauns, some sylphs, some spirits of the woods. Warmed with the invigorating wine, the village girls set themselves with trembling heels to the dance; the fiddlers thrashed their fiddles in melodious ecstasies; the jesters raised their shrill voices; the woodmen puckered up their lips in hope of kisses; the lovers broke away to the woods to whisper vows in shady glens. It was passing late in the afternoon when at last de Guyon found himself alone with Gabrielle, and able to speak of the shadow which the morrow would cast upon his life, and, as he hoped, upon hers.
They had walked slowly from the park and come into a little glen, in the heart of which a brook was bubbling. There was the shadow of aspens here, the perfume of violets and of wild roses; the fitful song of the reed-warbler and the wagtail. A grassy bank, grown over with primroses, served them well for seat; and here they rested, while from the distant park the hum of voices and the light music of the dance came to them on the waves of the wind. But the spirit of the glen was one of silence; and minutes passed before either of them spoke.
"Well, Monsieur de Guyon," said she at last, "I don't find you very witty to-day."
"Indeed," said he, seeking to look straight into her eyes, "but I have waited long for the opportunity."
She did not answer him at once, but began to twist a posy of the primroses. A glow of crimson suffused her face. There was so much tenderness in his voice that she no longer looked into his eyes—and she had ceased to smile.
"You must know," said she, breaking the embarrassing silence with an effort, "that this is one of the great days of my year——"
"Henceforth it will be the greatest day of mine," said he, feeling that whatever might come of it, he would not leave her with the word unspoken.
"To amuse is as much the duty of those who rule as to educate," she went on, making no reference to his compliment. "Three times every year my people keep holiday in the park. I encourage them to feel that they have some interest in the maintenance of my home that they have a friend here. Friendship, after all, is a creed, Monsieur de Guyon."
De Guyon had thought so little of any religion at all, that he was quite out of his depth when he tried to re- ply to her.
"This life," said he, "this to-day which is as yesterday, this to-morrow which must be as to-day, does it never weary you, never pall, never set you longing for that other life beyond your gates?"
She smiled at him now.
"When my life shall make me love less, then will I think of yours."
"Of mine?"
"Surely, since you throw down the glove for it. But tell me, mon ami, what do they say of the Château aux Loups at the palace? Indeed, I am very curious to know."
De Guyon sat thinking while a minute passed.
"They call you 'the little Huguenot,' believing you to be in heart a Protestant, as your husband was," said he at length, and quite bluntly. "They told me that you lived on herbs and slept in a cell."
"And that was all?"
"Certainly it was not; they said also that you were—well——"
"Well, what, Monsieur de Guyon? How you love to pique my curiosity."
He hesitated to use the word; but remembering that she was, above all else, a woman, he made bold at last to venture it.
"Parbleu!" said he. "I will not keep it from you. They spoke of your beauty."
She looked up at him quickly.
"It was unkind of them to deceive you."
"To deceive me? Oh, madame!"
She was now almost lying upon the grass, her head propped upon her elbows, her piquant oval face resting upon her hands. She had dressed herself in white for the mask, and the ribbons at her neck and upon her breast gave her the air of a little school-girl just come out of a convent. It seemed odd to de Guyon to call her "Madame," and when he had uttered the words, he could not help himself but must look into her great laughing eyes and fall in with her merry humour.
"Ciel!" said he, lying so close to her that their faces almost touched. "I begin to feel like a father to you madame."
"And to act like a cousin," she exclaimed, but without drawing away from him. "Indeed, I shall think that you wish to confess me."
"I could find no happier vocation; but it is I that should confess."
"I am all ears. What do you confess, monsieur?"
"The will that once would have done you an injury."
"Of which guilt——?"
"I am duly penitent."
"And for penance?"
"I leave you at dawn."
She became serious in a moment, casting down her eyes and playing nervously with the flowers she had picked. But he, longing for her with an ardent passion—the first guiltless passion of his life—pursued his questioning.
"You give me absolution?" he asked in a low voice.
"I give you my friendship," she replied, looking up, and with tenderness, into his eyes.
"Your friendship!" he exclaimed. "Oh, I will treasure that! Would to God it were something more!"
The fervour of his words seemed to trouble her.
"Friendship," she said, speaking very earnestly, "is a woman's best gift. She has nothing else."
"But her love?"
"That she cannot give or hold. The power is not hers. And friendship, Monsieur de Guyon, is the gateway of love."
"If it should be so for me, Gabrielle?"
"Dear friend," she answered, while he could hear his own heart beating, "what will be is known to God alone. Let us lift up our hearts to Him."
He took her hand and held it between both of his.
"I am not worthy to touch your lips, Gabrielle. Oh, I would give half my years if the yesterday of life could be blotted out."
She knew that he wished to tell her of the pain which the remembrance of other years—loveless years and years to be forgotten—brought upon him. There, in the silence of the glen, pictures of his past went whirling before his eyes, showing him the scenes he would well have shut out, the burning lips whose kisses he had known, the dark places he had trodden. The girl at his side seemed unreal—a vision from the hills—something beyond his touch or hope. Could he have read her heart he would have known that she was helplessly following the path of her emotions, making no effort to stem the tide of her affection, saying only, "I will lift him up, and in me he shall find all else—even the divine life."
Thus always did the woman in her conquer.
The pause was a long one. He broke