this lady in desperate ill-fortune, and she honoured me with her confidence.  Young man though I was, I defended her; I stopped at no measure to defend her:  against a powerful husband, remember—­the most unscrupulous of foes, who sought to rob her of every right she possessed.  And what I did then I again would do.  I was vowed to her interests, to protect a woman shamefully wronged; I did not stick at trifles, as you know; you have read my speech in defence of myself before the court.  By my interpretation of the case, I was justified; but I estranged my family and made the world my enemy.  I gave my time and money, besides the forfeit of reputation, to the case, and reasonably there was an arrangement to repay me out of the estate reserved for her, so that the baroness should not be under the degradation of feeling herself indebted.  You will not think that out of the way:  men of the world do not.  As for matters of the heart between us, we’re as far apart as the Poles.’

He spoke hurriedly.  He had said all that could be expected of him.

They were in a wood, walking through lines of spruce firs of deep golden green in the yellow beams.  One of these trees among its well-robed fellows fronting them was all lichen-smitten.  From the low sweeping branches touching earth to the plumed top, the tree was dead-black as its shadow; a vision of blackness.

’I will compose a beautiful, dutiful, modest, oddest, beseeching, screeching, mildish, childish epistle to her, and you shall read it, and if you approve it, we shall despatch it,’ said Clotilde.

‘There speaks my gold-crested serpent at her wisest!’ replied Alvan.  ’And now for my visit to your family:  I follow you in a day.  En avant! contre les canons!  A run to Lake Leman brings us to them in the afternoon.  I shall see you in the evening.  So our separation won’t be for long this time.  All the auspices are good.  We shall not be rich—­nor poor.’

Clotilde reminded him that a portion of money would be brought to the store by her.

‘We don’t count it,’ said he.  ’Not rich, certainly.  And you will not expect me to make money by my pen.  Above all things I detest the writing for money.  Fiction and verse appeal to a besotted public, that judges of the merit of the work by the standard of its taste:  avaunt!  And journalism for money is Egyptian bondage.  No slavery is comparable to the chains of hired journalism.  My pen is my fountain—­the key of me; and I give my self, I do not sell.  I write when I have matter in me and in the direction it presses for, otherwise not one word!’

‘I would never ask you to sell yourself,’ said Clotilde.  ’I would rather be in want of common comforts.’

He squeezed her wrist.  They were again in front of the black-draped blighted tree.  It was the sole tree of the host clad thus in scurf bearing a semblance of livid metal.  They looked at it as having seen it before, and passed on.