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154 harm come of it. But I thought the man’s face wore a look of triumph.”

“By Heaven,” I cried, “it shall not wear it for long! Which way did they go?”

She pointed to the road by the side of the bay, leading away from Avranches.

“That way. I watched the carriage and its dust till I saw it no more, because of the wood that lies between here and the road. You pursue them, sir?”

“To the world’s end, madame, if I must.”

She sighed and opened her lips to speak, but no words came; and without more, I turned and left her, and set my face to follow the carriage. I was, I think, half-mad with anger and bewilderment, for I did not think that it would be time well spent to ascend to the town and obtain a vehicle or a horse; but I pressed on afoot, weary and in pain as I was, along the hot white road. For now indeed my heart was on fire, and I knew that beside Marie Delhasse everything was nothing. So at first imperceptibly, slowly, and unobserved, but at the last with a swift resistless rush, the power of her beauty and of the soul that I had seemed to see in her won upon me; and that moment, when I thought that she had yielded to her enemy and mine, was the flowering and bloom of my love for her.

Where had they gone? Not to the duke’s house, or I should have met them as I rode down earlier in the morning. Then where? France was wide, and the world wider: my steps were slow. Where lay the use of the chase? In the