Matthiette turned from the window. Now, her bright audacity gone, her ardors chilled, you saw how like a grave, straightforward boy she was, how illimitably tender, how inefficient. "It may be that I have decided wrongly in this tangled matter," she said now. "And yet I think that God, Who loves us infinitely, cannot be greatly vexed at anything His children do for love of one another."
He came toward her. "I bid you go," he said. "Matthiette, it is my duty to bid you go, and it is your duty to obey."
She smiled wistfully through unshed tears. "Man's wisdom!" said Matthiette. "I think that it is not my duty. And so I disobey you, dear,--this once, and no more hereafter."
"And yet last night--" Raoul began.
"Last night," said she, "I thought that I was strong. I know now it was my vanity that was strong,--vanity and pride and fear, Raoul, that for a little mastered me. But in the dawn all things seem very trivial, saving love alone."
They looked out into the dew-washed gardens. The daylight was fullgrown, and already the clear-cut forms of men were passing beneath the swaying branches. In the distance a trumpet snarled.
"Dear love," said Raoul, "do you not understand that you have brought about my death? For Monsieur de Puysange is at the gates of Arnaye; and either he or Sieur Raymond will have me hanged ere noon."
"I do not know," she said, in a tired voice. "I think that Monsieur de Puysange has some cause to thank me; and my uncle loves me, and his heart, for all his gruffness, is very tender. And--see, Raoul!" She drew the dagger from her bosom. "I shall not survive you a long while, O man of all the world!"
Perplexed joy flushed through his countenance. "You will do this--for me?" he cried, with a sort of sob. "Matthiette, Matthiette, you shame me!"
"But I love you," said Matthiette. "How could it be possible, then, for me to live after you were dead?"
He bent to her. They kissed.
Hand in hand they went forth into the daylight. The kindly, familiar place seemed in Matthiette's eyes oppressed and transformed by the austerity of dawn. It was a clear Sunday morning, at the hightide of summer, and she found the world unutterably Sabbatical; only by a vigorous effort could memory connect it with the normal life of yesterday. The cool edges of the woods, vibrant now with multitudinous shrill pipings, the purple shadows shrinking eastward on the dimpling lawns, the intricate and broken traceries of the dial (where they had met so often), the blurred windings of their path, above which brooded the peaked roofs and gables and slender clerestories of Arnaye, the broad river yonder lapsing through deserted sunlit fields,--these things lay before them scarce heeded, stript of all perspective, flat as an open scroll. To them all this was alien. She and Raoul were quite apart from these matters, quite alone, despite the men of Arnaye, hurrying toward the courtyard, who stared at them curiously, but said nothing. A brisk wind was abroad in the tree-tops, scattering stray leaves, already dead, over the lush grass. Tenderly Raoul brushed a little golden sycamore leaf from the lovelier gold of Matthiette's hair.