ad made a movement.

"Oh! once more I tell you, don't be afraid," she said. "I want to live.
Fear nothing, I will go home, _parbleu_."

"Home?"

"Or to my uncle's."

"But, really, Monsieur le Ministre," she said, "you are taking upon
yourself the affairs of Monsieur Jouvenet, your Prefect of Police. I
know him well, and certainly he asks fewer questions than Your
Excellency."

"That, perhaps," said Vaudrey, with a smile, "is because he has less
anxiety about you than I have."

"Ah! bah!" said Marianne.

She had by this time got close to her hackney coach and looked at the
coachman for a moment. "Don't you think it would be very wrong to waken
him?" she said. "Will you accompany me for a moment, Monsieur le
Ministre?"

Vaudrey paled slightly, divining under this question a seductive
prospect.

Marianne's gray eyes were never turned from him.

They walked along slowly, followed by the coupe whose lengthened shadow
was projected in front of them along the yellow pathway, moving beside
the lake where the swans floated with their pure white wings extended
and striking the water with their feet, raising all around them a white
foam, like snow falling in flakes. The blue heavens were reflected in
the water. The grass, of a burnt-green, almost gray color, looked like
worn velvet here and there, showing the weft and spotted with earth.

Side by side they walked, Vaudrey earnestly watching Marianne, while she
gazed about her and pointed out to him the gray, winter-worn rocks, the
smooth ivy, and on the horizon some hinds browsing, in the far distance,
as in a desert, the bare grass as yellow as ripe wheat, around a pond,
in a gloomy landscape, russet horizons against a pale sky, presenting a
forlorn, mysterious and fleeting aspect.

"One would think one's self at the end of the world," said Sulpice, with
lowered voice and troubled heart.

A slight laugh from Marianne was her only reply, as she pointed with the
tip of her finger to an inscription on a sign:

"_To Croix-Catelan!_" she said. "That end of the world is decidedly
Parisian!"

"Nevertheless, see how isolated we are to-day."

It seemed as if she had divined his thought, for she took a path that
skirted a road and there, in the narrowest strip of soft, fresh soil, on
which the tiny heels of her boots made imprints like kisses upon a
cheek, she walked in front of him, the shadows of the small branches
dappling her black dress, while Vaudrey, deeply mov