She was full of vital courage, resisting the deadly chill.  This was not a summer fog, lightly to be traversed.  It went dank through the bones.  When I had helped her to a bench, remembering there was nothing dry to wrap around her, I slipped off my coat and forcibly added its thickness to her shoulders.

“Do you think I will let you do that, monsieur?”

My teeth chattered and shocked together so it was impossible to keep from laughing, as I told her I always preferred to be coatless when I rowed a boat.

We could see each other by the high light that sometimes gilded the face, and sometimes was tarnished almost to eclipse.  Madame de Ferrier crept forward, and before I knew her intention, cast my garment again around me.  I helped the boat shift its balance so she would have to grasp at me for support; the chilled round shape of her arm in my hand sent waves of fire through me.  With brazen cunning, moreover, that surprised myself, instead of pleading, I dictated.

“Sit beside me on the rower’s bench, madame, and the coat will stretch around both of us.”

Like a child she obeyed.  We were indeed reduced to saving the warmth of our bodies.  I shipped my oars and took one for a paddle, bidding Madame de Ferrier to hold the covering in place while I felt for the shore.  She did so, her arm crossing my breast, her soft body touching mine.  She was cold and still as the cloud in which we moved; but I was a god, riding triumphantly high above the world, satisfied to float through celestial regions forever, bearing in my breast an unquenchable coal of fire.

The moon played tricks, for now she was astern, and now straight ahead, in that confusing wilderness of vapor.

“Madame,” I said to my companion, “why have you been persuaded to go back to France?”

She drew a deep breath.

“I have not been persuaded.  I have been forced by circumstances.  Paul’s future is everything.”

“You said you would rather make him a woodchopper than a suppliant to the Bonapartes.”

“I would.  But his rights are to be considered first.  He has some small chance of regaining his inheritance through the influence of Count de Chaumont now.  Hereafter there may be no chance.  You know the fortunes and lands of all emigres were forfeited to the state.  Ours have finally reached the hands of one of Napoleon’s officers.  I do not know what will be done.  I only know that Paul must never have cause to reproach me.”

I was obliged to do my duty in my place as she was doing her duty in hers; but I wished the boat would sink, and so end all journeys to France.  It touched shore, on the contrary, and I grasped a rock which jutted toward us.  It might be the point of an island, it might be the eastern land, as I was inclined to believe, for the moon was over our right shoulders.

Probing along with the oar I found a cove and a shallow bottom, and there I beached our craft with a great shove.