The indifferent Alfred drove his unhappy burden towards the river. Walled in by the rush of snowflakes about him he made what way he could, but it was well-nigh impossible to see. The lamps gave no light, for the flakes had built a shutter across the glass like a policeman's dark lantern. The flying multitudes in the air turned him dizzy; he could not tell upon which side of the road he drove, and he could not tell what he would do when the wall beyond the outskirts of Chantilly forsook him. As to what was happening below him, what ruts, ditches, pits or hillocks he was navigating, he had no idea; his ship was afloat upon the snow, sluggishly rolling and heaving as it met with soft, mysterious obstacles.

Heaviness and gloom sat upon the velvet seat behind him. The white, wild night outside was playful and waggish compared with the black dejection behind the opaque glass windows.

Fanny, who could not see her hand move in the darkness, saw clearly with other miserable and roving eyes the road that lay before her.

"Julien, good-bye. Don't forget me!" That she would say to him in a few days; that was the gate, the black portal which would lead her into the road. That she would say, with entreaty, yet no painful tones of hers would represent enough the entreaty of her heart that neither would forget the other. She thought of this.

Not in wilful unreason, or in disbelief of his promise, she looked at this parting as though it might be final. Without him she could see no charm ahead. And yet…. Tough, leathery heart—indestructible spinner she knew herself to be—no sooner should the dew fall from this enchanting fabric, the web itself be torn, than she would set to work upon the flimsiest of materials to weave another. And with such weaving comes forgetfulness. She thought of this.

Not four feet away, another mind, inscrutable to hers, was violently employed upon its own problem. In this wild darkness the wall of Chantilly had bid him go on alone; it left him first without guide, second without shelter. He drove into the path of a rough and bitter storm which was attacking everything in the short plain between the forest and the town. It leapt upon him in an outbreak of hisses; cut him with hailstones, swept up false banks of snow before him till the illusion of a road led him astray. He turned too much to the right, hung on the lip of a buried ditch, turned back again and saved himself. He turned too much to the left, tilted, hung, was in danger—yet found the centre of the road again. Here, on this wild plain, the exposed night was whiter—blanched enough, foreign enough, fitful enough to puzzle the most resolved and native traveller.

He arrived at a cross-roads. Yet was it a cross-roads? When roads are filled in level with the plain around them, the plain itself wind-churned like a ploughed field, when banks are rompishly erected, or melt unstably before the blows of the storm, it is hard to choose the true road from the false. He chose a road which instantly he saw to be no road. Too late. He pitched, this time not to recover. "A river—a river-bed!" was his horrified thought. Down went the nose of the car before him, the steering-wheel hitting him in the chest. Down came Fanny and all her black thoughts against the glass at his back. The car had not fallen very far; it had slid forward into a snow-lined dyke, and remained, resting on its radiator, its front wheels thrust into the steep walls of the bank, its back wheels in the air. Alfred climbed down from a seat which had lost its seating power; Fanny opened the door and stepped from the black interior into the deep snow. The front lamps were extinguished and buried in the opposite bank, the little red light at the back shone upwards to heaven.

"Well—"

"Well!"

"Are you hurt?"

"Not at all. And you?"

"Not a bit."

Their cold relations did not seem one whit changed from what they had been in the inn. Nothing had intervened but a little reflection, a little effort, and a vigorous jerk. Why should they change? They stood side by side in the noisy violence of the storm, and one shouted to the other: "Can you get her out!" and the other answered, "No."

"I will walk on to the river."

"You would never find it."

The truth of this she saw as she looked round.

Alfred left her and descending into the dyke, went on his knees by the radiator and fumbled deep in the snow with his hand. A hissing arose as the heated water ran from the tap he had turned. He emptied the water from the generator; the tail light sank and went out.

"No one will run into her," he remarked. "No one will pass."

Aie—screamed the wind and created a pillar of white powder. Fanny, losing her balance, one foot sank on the edge of a rut, and she went down on her hands; to the knees her silk-clad legs met the cold bite of the snow.

"You must come back with me," shouted Alfred in her ear.

That seemed true and necessary; she could not reach the river; she could not stay where she was. She followed him. At the next ditch he put out his hand and helped her across. They had no lamp. By the light of the snow she watched his blue-clad legs as they sank and rose; her own sinking and rising in the holes he left for her, the buffets of wind un-steadying her at every step. She followed him. And because she was as green as a green bough which bursts into leaf around a wound, the disturbing, the exciting menace of her discovery brightened her heart, set her mind whirling, and overgrew her dejection.

They gained the Chantilly wall, and experienced at once its protection. The howling wind passed overhead and left them in a lew; the dancing snowflakes steadied and dropped more like rain upon them; she moved up abreast of Alfred.

"I will take you back to the inn," he said. "They will have a room there."

"Julien will have left and gone to his lodging."

"Yes, at the other end of the town," answered Alfred, she fancied with grim satisfaction. ("Though it is as well," she thought; "there will be less scandal in the eyes of the innkeeper.")

"To-morrow morning, mademoiselle, I will fetch you at six with another car and its driver, Foss, a man whom I can trust. We will take you to the river, and on the return journey drag the car from the ditch. It should be easy; she has not heeled over on her side."

"That will be marvellous. I cannot tell you how I apologise."

This, she began to see, was serious; her debt to the enemy Alfred was growing hourly.

"No, no," he said, as though he saw the thing in the light of common justice. "You have come over to dine with Julien; we must get you back to the river."

"Nevertheless it's monstrous," she thought, "what he has to do for me."

But Alfred regarded it less as a friendly office towards Julien than as a duty, an order given by an officer. He was a sergeant, and four years of war had changed him from an irritable and independent friend to a dogged and careful subordinate. He did not like Fanny any the more for the trouble she was giving him; but he did not hold her responsible for his discomforts. She must be got to the river and to the river he would get her.

Pray heaven she never crossed it again.

When they arrived on the pavement outside the inn, he said: "Knock, mademoiselle, and ask if there is a room. It would be better that I should not be seen. Explain that the snow prevented you from returning. If there is a room do not come back to tell me, I shall watch you enter, and fetch you at six in the morning."

She thanked him again, and following his instructions, found herself presently in a small room under the eaves—pitied by the innkeeper's wife, given a hot brick wrapped in flannel by the innkeeper's daughter, warmed and cheered and, in a very short time, asleep. At half-past five she was called, dressed herself, and drank a cup of coffee; paying a fabulous bill which included two francs for the hot brick.

At six came Alfred, in another car, seated beside Foss, the new driver, a pale man with a grave face. They moved off in the grey dawn which brightened as they drove. Beyond the Chantilly wall the plain stretched, and on it the labouring wheel-marks of the night before were plainly marked. Alfred, beside the driver, let down a pane of glass to tell her that he had already been out with Foss and towed in the other car. She saw the ditch into which they had sunk, the scrambled marks upon the bank where she had been towed out. In ten minutes they were in the midst of the forest.

Now, Fate the bully, punishing the unlucky, tripping up the hurried, stepped in again. This car, which had been seized in a hurry by cold and yawning men, was not as she should be.

"Is she oiled?" Foss had called to the real driver of the car.

"She is … everything!" answered the man, in a hurry, going off to his coffee. She was not.

Just as the approaching sun began to clear the air, just as with a spring at her heart Fanny felt that to be present at the opening of a fine day was worth all the trouble in the world, the engine began to knock. She saw Foss's head tilt a little sideways, like a keen dog who is listening. The knock increased. The engine laboured, a grinding set in; Foss pulled up at the side of the road and muttered to Alfred. He opened the bonnet, stared a second, then tried the starting handle. It would not move. Fanny let down the pane of glass and watched them in silence. "Not a drop," said Foss's low voice. And later, "Oil, yes, but—find me the tin!"

"Do you mean there is no oil, no spare oil—" Alfred hunted vainly round the car, under the seats, in the tool box. There was no tin of oil.

"If I had some oil," said Foss, "and if I let her cool a little, I could manage—with a syringe."

They consulted together. Alfred nodded, and approached the window.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "I am going on to the next village to get a tin of oil. There is a garage. Cars will be passing soon; I must ask you to lie covered with the rug in the bottom of the car; your uniform is very visible. Foss will remain with you."

Fanny lay down in the bottom of the car, fitting her legs among a couple of empty petrol tins; Foss covered her with the rug. A quarter of an hour went by, and above her she began to hear the voices of birds; below her the cold crept up. She had no idea how far the village might be, and it is possible that Alfred had had no idea either. A bicycle bell rang at her side; later she heard the noise of a car, which passed her with a rush. Lying with her ear so close to the poor body of the motor she felt it to be but cold bones in a cemetery, dead, dead.

Outside in the road, Foss shaded his eyes and looked up the now sparkling road a hundred times. The motors increased; the morning traffic between PrÉcy and Chantilly awoke; the cars were going in to the offices of the G.Q.G. Now and then Foss would come to the window of the car. "Don't move," he would say. The floor-boards were rattled by an icy wind that blew over the face of the snow and up under the car; the brown, silk legs lay prone and stiff between the petrol cans, lifeless now to the knee. She was seized with fits of violent shivering. At one moment she had planned in her despair to call to Foss and tell him she would walk—but she had let the moment pass and now she put away the thought of walking on those lifeless feet. Besides, she would be seen—that well-known cap, bobbing back between the trees from Chantilly so early in the morning!

"Oh, Honour of the Section, I am guarding you like my life!" She tried to raise her head a little to ease her neck.

"Don't move," said Foss.

Feet pattered past her; motors swept by; bicycle bells rang.

"Foss," she said.

The soldier leant towards her and listened.

"Choose your own time, but you must let me sit up a moment. I am in pain."

"Then, now, mademoiselle!"

She sat up, flinging the rug back, dazzled by the splendour of the forest, the climbing sun, the heavy-burdened trees. Behind her was a cart coming up slowly; far ahead a cyclist swayed in the ruts of the road. As they approached her she pleaded: "They can't know me! Let me sit up—"

But Foss knew only one master, his sergeant.

"Better go down, mademoiselle."

She went down again under the black rug, close against the wind that lifted the floor-boards, wrapping her coat more tightly round her, folding her arms about her knees.

"It must be nearly eight. I have an hour more before they come in to breakfast. Ah, and when they do, will one of them go into my bedroom with my letters?"

She tried to pick out in her mind that one most friendly to her, that one who was to destroy her. She heard in spirit her cry: "Fanny isn't there!"

She thought of Stewart who would have woken early, planning anxiously to save her. The faces of the Guardians of the Honour of the Section began to visit her one by one, and horror spread in her. Then, pushing them from her, attempting to escape: "They are not all the world—" But they were all the world—if in a strange land they were all to frown together. The thought was horrible. Time to get there yet! Alas, that the car was not facing towards Chantilly—so early in the morning!

"Foss, Foss, don't you see him coming?"

"The road is full of people."

A car rushed by them, yet never seemed to pass. The engine slowed down and a voice called: "What's up? Anything you want?"

It was the voice of Roland Vauclin. Ah, she knew him—that fat, childish man, who loved gossip as he loved his food. To Fanny it seemed but a question of seconds before he would lift the rug, say gravely, "Good morning, mademoiselle," before he would rush back to his village spreading the news like a fall of fresh snow over the roofs. She lay still from sheer inertia. Had Foss answered? She could not hear.

Then she heard him clear his throat and speak.

"The Captain asked me to get a bit of wood for his fire, sir. I have a man in there gathering branches, while I do a bit of 'business' with the car."

"Oh, right!… Go on!" said Vauclin to his own chauffeur. Again they were left alone. Talk between them was almost impossible; Fanny was so muffled, Foss so anxiously watched for Alfred. The reedy singing between the boards where the wind attacked her occupied all her attention. The very core of warmth seemed extinguished in her body, never to be lit again. She remembered their last fourier, or special body-servant, who had gone on leave upon an open truck, and who had grown colder and colder—"and he never got warm again and he died, madame," the letter from his wife had told them.

"I think he is coming! There is no one else on the road, mademoiselle.
Will you look? I don't see very well—"

She tried to throw off the rug and sit up, but her frozen elbow slipped and she fell again on the floor of the car. Pulling herself up she stared with him through the glass. Far up the white road a little figure toiled towards them, carrying something, wavering as though the ice-ruts were deep, picking its way from side to side. Neither of them was sure whether it was Alfred; they watched in silence. Before she knew it was upon her a car went by; she dived beneath the rug, striking her forehead on the corner of the folding seat.

"Did they see? Was any one inside?"

"It was an empty car. Please be careful."

Foss was cold with rebuke. After that she lay still, isolated even from Foss. Ten minutes went by and suddenly Foss spoke—"Did you have to go far?"

And Alfred's hard voice answered "Yes."

Then she heard the two men working, tools clattering, murmured voices, and in ten minutes Foss said: "Try the starting handle."

She heard the efforts, the labour of Alfred at the handle.

"He will kill himself—he will break a blood-vessel," she thought as she listened to him. Every few minutes someone seized the handle and wound and wound—as she had never wound in her life—on and on, past the very limit of endurance. And under her ear, in the cold bones of the car, not a sign of life! Not a sign of life, and, as though she could hear them, all the clocks in the world struck nine.

The Guardians of the Honour would be in at breakfast now! they would be sitting, sitting—discussing her absence. Stewart, upstairs, would be looking out of the window, watching the river, perhaps answering questions indifferently with her cool look. "Oh, in the garage—or walking in the forest. I don't know." Cough! She jumped as the bones in the bottom of the car moved under her, and the engine breathed. The noise died out, Foss leapt to the handle and wound and wound, fiercely, like a man who meant to make her breathe again or die. Again she struggled to life, lived for a few minutes, choked and was silent.

"How is the handle?"

"Pretty stiff," said Foss, "but getting better. Give me the oil squirt."

Alfred took his place at the handle. Suddenly the car sprang to life again on a full deep note. Fanny lifted her head a little. Foss was leaning over the carburettor with his thin anxious look: Alfred stood in the snow, dark red in the face, and covered with oil. Soon they were moving along the road, slowly at first, and with difficulty: then faster and more freely. A little thin warmth began to creep up through the boards and play about her legs.

She was carried along under her dark rug for another twenty minutes, then fell against the seat as the car turned sharply into the forsaken road that led to the broken bridge. In five minutes more the car had stopped and Alfred was at the door saying: "At last, mademoiselle!" She stammered her thanks as she tried to step from the car to the ground —but fell on her knees on the dashboard.

"Have you hurt your foot?" said Alfred, who was hot.

"I am only cold," she said humbly, unwilling to intrude her puny endurances on their gigantic labours.

She sat on the step of the car rubbing her ankles, and stared at the meadows of thawing snow, at the open porches of stone which led the road straight into the river, at the church and the sunlit houses on the other side.

Bidding them good-bye she reached the bank, and climbed down it, stumbling in the frozen mud and pits of ice till she reached the stiff reeds at the bank.

The river had floes of ice upon it, green ice which swung and caught among the reeds at the edge. "It is thin," she thought, pushing her shoe through it, "it can't prevent the boat from crossing the river." Yet she was anxious.

There on the other side was the little hut, the steps, the boat tied to the stone and held rigid in the ice. A shaggy dog ran by her feet to the river's edge and barked. Feet came clambering down the bank and a workman followed the dog, with a bag of tools and a basket. He walked up to the river, and putting his hands in a trumpet to his mouth called in a huge voice: "Un passant, Margot! Margot!" Fanny remembered her whistle and blew that too.

There was no sign of life, and the little hut looked as before, like a brown dog asleep in the sun. Fanny turned to the man, ready to share her anxiety with him, but he had sat down on the bank and was retying a bootlace that had come undone.

Margot never showed herself at the hut window, at the hut door. When Fanny turned back to whistle again she saw her standing up in the boat, which, freed, was drifting out towards them—saw her scatter the ice with her oar—and the boat, pushed upstream, came drifting down towards them in a curve to hit the bank at their feet. The girl stepped out, smiling, happy, pretty, undimmed by the habit of trade. The man got in and sat down, the dog beside him.

"I would stand," said Margot to Fanny, "it's so wet."

She made no allusion to the broken appointment for the night before.
Fanny, noticing the dripping boards of the boat, stood up, her hand upon
Margot's shoulder to steady herself. The thin, illusory ice shivered and
broke and sank as the oar dipped in sideways.

Cocks were crowing on the other side—the sun drew faint colours from the ice, the river clattered at the side of the boat, wind twisted and shook her skirt, and stirred her hair. All was forgotten in the glory of the passage of the river.

Margot, smiling up under her damp, brown hair, took her five sous, pressed her town boots against the wooden bar, and shot the boat up against the bank.

Fanny went up the bank, over the railway lines, and out into the road. Two hundred yards of road lay before her, leading straight up to the house. On the left was a high wall, on the right the common covered with snow—should some one come out of the house there was no chance of hiding. She glanced down at her tell-tale silk stockings; yet she could not hurry on those stiff and painful feet. She was near the door in the wall.

She passed in—the dog did not bark; came to the foot of the steps—nobody looked out of the window; walked into the hall among their hanging coats and macintoshes, touched them, moved them with her shoulder; heard voices behind the door of the breakfast room, was on the stairs, up out of sight past the first bend, up, up, into Stewart's room.

"Do you know…?"

"No one knows!"

"Oh … oh…." All her high nerves came scudding and shuddering down into the meadows of content. Eternal luck…. She crept under Stewart's eiderdown and shivered.

"Here's the chocolate. I will boil it again on my cooker. Oh, you have a sort of ague…."

Good friend … kind friend! She had pictured her like that, anxious, unquestioning and warm!

Later she went downstairs and opened the door of the breakfast room upon the Guardians of the Honour.

As she stood looking at them she felt that her clothes were the clothes of some one who had spent hours in the forest—that her eyes gave out a gay picture of all that was behind them—her adventures must shout aloud from her hands, her feet.

"Had your breakfast?" said some one.

"Upstairs," said Fanny, contentedly, and marvelled.

She had only to open and close her lips a dozen times, bid them form the words: "I have been out all night," to turn those browsing herds of benevolence into an ambush of threatening horns, lowered at her. Almost … she would like to have said the sentence.

But basking in their want of knowledge she sat down and ate her third breakfast.