I’m afraid he had become sentimental.  It seemed a serious pity that what his heart was full of should spend itself on the incapable air.  His sense of humour was benumbed.  And when, presently, the frogs in the pond, a hundred yards away, set up their monotonous plaintive concert, he laid down his arms.  ’It’s no use, I’m in for it,’ he confessed.  After all, he was out of England.  He was in Gascony, the borderland between amorous France and old romantic Spain.

I don’t know whom his imagination dwelt the more fondly with:  the stricken Queen, beyond there, alone in the darkness and the silence, where the night lay on the forest of Granjolaye; or the pale horse-woman of the morning.

But surely, as yet, he had no ghost of a reason for dreaming that the two were one and the same.

VI.

‘Now, let’s be logical,’ he said next morning.  ’Let’s be logical and hopeful—­yet not too hopeful, not utopian.  Let’s look the matter courageously in the face.  Since she rode there once, why may she not ride again in the Sentier des Contrebandiers?  Why mayn’t she ride there often—­even daily?  I think that’s logical.  Don’t you think that’s logical?’

The person he addressed, a tall, slender young man, with a fresh-coloured skin, a straight nose, and rather a ribald eye, was vigorously brushing a head of yellowish hair, in the looking-glass before him.

‘Tush!  But of course you think so,’ Paul went on.  ’You always think as I do.  If you knew how I despise a sycophant!  And yet—­you’re not bad looking.  No, I’ll be hanged if I can honestly say that you’re bad looking.  You’ve got nice hair, and plenty of it; and there’s a weakness about your mouth and chin that goes to my heart.  I hate firm people.—­What?  So do you?  I thought so.—­Ah, well, my poor friend, you’re booked for a shocking long walk this morning.  You must summon your utmost fortitude.—­Under the greenwood tree, who loves to lie with me?’ he carolled forth, to Marzials’s tune.  ’But come!  I say!  That’s anticipating.’

And he set forth for the Smugglers’ Pathway,—­where, sure enough, she rode again.  As she passed him, her eyes met his:  at which he was conscious of a good deal of interior commotion.  ’By Jove, she’s magnificent, she’s really stunning,’ he exclaimed to himself.  He perceived that she was rather a big woman, tall, with finely-rounded, smoothly-flowing lines.  Her hair,—­velvety blue-black in its shadows,—­where the light caught it was dully iridescent.  Her features were irregular enough to give her face a high degree of individuality, yet by no means to deprive it of delicacy or attractiveness.  She had a superb white throat, and a soft voluptuous chin; and ’As I live, I never saw such a mouth,’ said Paul.

Where did she come from?  Bayonne?  Never.  Andre might have been mistaken about Chateau Yroulte; the Spanish Jew had perhaps sold it, or found a tenant.  Or, further afield, there were Chateaux Labenne, Saumuse, d’Orthevielle.  Or else, the Queen had a guest.