Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/386

 nized Marthe Ludérac. Her turn had come. She stepped forward and withdrew the veil.

The tablet, set flatly in the grey limestone, might almost have grown by natural agencies of time and weather from the cliff, so simple, so elemental was its design. The life-size profile, carved in low relief, seemed to breathe from the rock; but with another breath than that of life. Had the spirit of the dead girl yearned for a reincarnation in her loved country, her longing might thus have found fulfilment; for this strange head, bent forward as if to gaze down at the great river and out over the plains, was like an emanation of the dreaming soul, so remembering past beauty that it had emerged through the rock—and through the minds of those who had loved her—to look and listen for ever to the sights and sounds that had accompanied its pilgrimage on earth. It looked; it listened; but what was the meaning of the beauty that it saw, the secret melody it heard?

Above it, carved in the framing stone, an inscription ran: 'Marthe Ludérac:—She had compassion on all that suffers and lost her life, below this spot, while rescuing a kid from the flood.'

Beneath was a drinking-fountain, and carved round it, processionally, a file of animals, led by an archaic girlish figure carrying a kid.

The crowd gazed, silently, and in an unbroken silence listened to Jill's brief words. She told them that her husband had drawn Marthe Ludérac's head from memory and that a friend of theirs, a young French