A honey-coloured haze of autumn glory hung over the trees and fields outside Aix, where a fÊte was being held, this perfect day in late October. Among the crowds who wandered in and out of the trees, the booths, the stalls were Luc de Clapiers and his promised wife, ClÉmence de SÉguy. He had returned home for his betrothal and to prepare for the appointment he was to take up in the spring. His prospects were suddenly pure gold to him; the sense of the opportunity ahead, of the achievement within his grasp, of success, of fulfilment mingled with the joy of pleasing his father, of satisfying all those claims of family affection and family pride, which had so often seemed a chain and a clog, into one ecstasy of living that was crowned by the gentle passion and happy devotion of ClÉmence, who seemed to have no wish in the world but to shine for him. Her soft youth, her grave ignorance, her pretty follies and lofty ideals of constancy, self-sacrifice, and truth won from him a tender respect and a generous gratitude that seemed to her perfect love. When she was absent from him he did not often think of her. She filled her place in his mind as his promised wife; over his soul she had no dominion.

They paused before a stage in front of a tent set among a group of elm trees. A little group of townsfolk in their best clothes were watching a marionette show that was nearly concluded. Above the tent fluttered long red pennons against the blue sky and gold leaves; the stage was hung at the back with white curtains and in front with a striped tapestry of many colours, on the edge of which, where it trailed in the golden dust, a man in green velvet with a comical painted face sat beating a scarlet drum.

From the back of the tent sounded a brisk, lively music, to which the puppets danced a finale, fluttering their laces and spangles.

ClÉmence laughed instinctively and laid her hand on Luc’s sleeve.

“Is it not beautiful?” she said. She had never been out of Aix in her life, and never to a fair before: she was only eighteen.

The marionettes disappeared, and a little girl not above six years old sprang on to the stage with a coil of rope in her hand.

“I should like to stay,” said ClÉmence.

There was a thin semicircle of seats about the stage; at one end of this, in the front, they seated themselves.

The small performer deftly fastened the rope from one end to the other of the stage, about five feet from the ground, and commenced walking across it. She wore an apple-green coloured bodice and a white skirt with a red frill; she had a small, dark face, and frowned down at the rope with her arms spread wide and her body swaying.

ClÉmence leant forward and watched with grave absorption. Luc looked at her, studied her with covert intensity, which she was too occupied with the performance to notice.

Her face was slightly flushed, the lips parted, the absorbed eyes shaded by the brim of her straw hat; between her warm-coloured, fine neck and the frilled cambric of her fichu rolled a cluster of brown curls that caught the sunlight in threads of gold; her small and helpless-looking hands, covered in fine black silk mittens, were folded in her lap; the full folds of her pale violet silk gown fell over the chair and touched the dust.

Luc marvelled at her. That adorable little face had never expressed sorrow, weariness, depression, anger, or any sad passion; it was untouched by yearning, longing—by any struggle; it was, save for the full development of its beauty, the face of an infant; and yet she had calmly pledged herself to the stormy virtues of constancy, self-abnegation, self-sacrifice, unending fidelity—more than he had ever asked of her.

“I used to consider her a child,” thought Luc; “but she is nearer an angel.” Then he forgot the stage under the trees, the passing holiday-makers, and even the near presence of his betrothed, and was only aware of the sunshine, which carried him back to Paris and the Pont Neuf—and the river flowing past the Louvre and the isle of the city (always the river ran through all his dreams and visions)—and the Rue du Bac at night with the street lights gleaming through the rain—and then the sunshine again over the poplar trees on the quays and the spires of the churches.

He thought, too, of M. de Voltaire, and how that great man would smile to think that he, Luc, was supremely happy in the prospect of his modest appointment and his simple wife.

A timid touch on his sleeve roused him. ClÉmence was gazing at him with shining eyes.

“Is it not wonderful?” she whispered.

Luc glanced at the stage; the child had raised herself by one hand on the rope upright into the air, her feet close together, her green tights a vivid line of colour, and her white and crimson skirts a ruffle round her waist.

A man came from the back of the stage and caught the child in his arms; he wore a robe of loose pattern composed of squares of black and white, and he began to execute a fantastic dance with the child on his shoulder.

The man in green velvet left off beating the drum, and began collecting from the crowd in a pink and gold shaded shell.

Luc’s gaze wandered from the performers, and he watched the mummer’s extravagant bows and grimaces as he solicited his guerdon from the spectators.

Presently he stopped before a lady who stood in the shade under one of the elm trees, and who was remarkable both for a certain air of the great world not common to the nobility of Aix, and for the fact that she was alone with only a black page in attendance. Luc could not see her face, for she wore a heavy-plumed beaver, and her figure was disguised by a scarlet riding-cloak, yet she interested him by reason of an extraordinary mixture of humility and defiance in her air, conveyed by something in her pose, the droop of her shoulders, and the set of her head.

She gave the player a coin, and he passed on; she remained under the tree, a conspicuous figure, and one of a mournfulness out of place in this time of carnival.

Several people looked at her; some stopped to stare.

Luc wondered who she was, why she was here alone and apart from the general gaiety.

He was looking at her when she came slowly out of the shadow, her page behind her, and as she moved into the sunlight Luc recognized Carola Koklinska.

“The show is over,” said ClÉmence regretfully.

A gaudy painted curtain had been drawn across the little stage, and the people were moving away to other booths.

“Shall we go?” asked Luc.

“Yes; it is rather cold,” she answered shyly. She rose from the little green chair, and as she turned Carola, walking in front of the poles and canvas, was full in her vision.

Carola looked over her shoulder and saw the girl; the two gazed directly at each other.

“Who is that lady?” asked ClÉmence, for she saw Luc’s salutation and the stranger’s faint, answering smile.

“A Polish Countess,” he answered, “whom I met in Prague and in Paris.”

“Why, what is she here for—alone?” questioned Mademoiselle de SÉguy. “And will you not present me to her?” Her ardent desire to be gracious to any acquaintance of his showed in her eager words.

Luc smiled.

“I never knew her well enough,” he said, “and it seems she does not wish to speak to me.”

Certainly Carola, without a backward look, had disappeared in the crowd. ClÉmence seemed disappointed.

“I wish she had stayed,” she remarked sincerely.

Luc made no answer; he was wondering what had brought Carola to Aix. He had thought that she was still in Austria; he supposed she might be on her way to Avignon; yet he knew M. de Richelieu was in Paris, and under any circumstances it seemed curious that she should be alone at a public fÊte—she who had always affected such magnificence.

A little sigh from ClÉmence recalled him from his momentary reflection.

“It is cold,” she repeated timidly.

“Come out into the sun,” he answered, and they moved slowly away from the crowd, beyond the elms, and so beyond the fÊte, into a little slope of meadow land where the grass was yet untrod and green. The western distance, blue, hazed, and mysterious, was half hid by a belt of beech trees, whose boughs bent beneath a load of tawny, orange, gold, and crimson leaves.

The distant, mechanical music of the fÊte was in the air, and occasional gusts of laughter and of applause broke the monotonous rhythm of the melody.

Luc and ClÉmence moved farther and farther away from these sounds; the streaming sunlight wrapped them in warmth and glory, the beech trees were a dazzle of golden colour before their eyes, and the sky overhead was clear blue without a trace of cloud. The girl sighed, looked at the trees, the heavens, then at the ground.

“Are you sad, my dear?” asked Luc very tenderly.

“No,” she answered in a thin voice; “only I should like to do—something—for you.”

“For me?” His face flashed into a charming smile.

“Yes.” She lifted her childlike countenance and her voice was stronger. “Sometimes I wish that you were poor or lonely or—despised—that I might prove what I can only say now.”

He was abashed and overwhelmed. He saw tears of sincerity glittering on her long, drooping lashes; the heroic in his own soul was quick to salute the heroic rising to him in hers.

He stopped and turned to face her.

“You must not say that,” he said, taking her by the shoulders very gently. “I do not deserve that you should say that, ClÉmence.”

She shuddered and bent her head lower.

“I am such an ordinary woman—but now I feel I could do something great—for you. I—I cared for you before you ever thought of me, you know. When you were in Paris—I used—to—pray—every night—that you might come back.”

She gave a quivering little laugh. He looked at her with intense earnestness, and the blood flushed into his face.

“You will have my life’s entire homage, ClÉmence,” he responded gravely. “To have you for my wife is beyond my desert. I want you to do nothing for me but be yourself and smile on my endeavours to please you.”

He took his hands lightly from her shoulders, and she clung weakly and gently to his arm.

“You do believe I would do anything in the world for you?” she said in a kind of broken passion. “Oh, I feel so foolish, so ignorant—and you have a great career before you. But if I ever have a chance——”

“What makes you speak like this?” he asked in a tone of reverent wonder. “I have done nothing for you——”

“Oh, oh!” she murmured, as if she concealed a secret pain. “You do not understand me. But if you are ever in any misfortune——”

“You are the sweetest child in the world,” Luc interrupted, “and you must not think of misfortune—I trust never to bring you within the shadow of any trouble.”

She gave a little fluttering sigh and slipped her arm from his. They reached a low fence that separated the meadow from the beech trees and there they rested, looking, through a break in the ruddy foliage, at the sweet expanse of open country.

Luc’s heart was singing within him. All sense of struggle, of discord, of loneliness, of hopes deferred, of ambitions cheated was over; the road was open, free. He would tread it in the old ways of honour and nobility; he would fulfil himself, and at the same time respect his name, his blazon, and the traditions of his race. His companion was beside him and prepared to follow him with more than conventional affection, while he experienced a new and exquisite pleasure in offering her all the devotion of a hitherto untouched heart. In truth it seemed to Luc, as he gazed over the prospect of Provence, that here, in his native place, among his own people, he had found the peace he had looked for uselessly abroad; here, in simple ClÉmence, were the high virtues he had once thrilled to think he had met in Carola Koklinska.

The sun glowed to its setting; superb bars of purple and scarlet began to burn out of the dense gold of the west; a low, clear breeze arose and swept over the grass.

ClÉmence broke the charmed silence.

“Are you sure of me?” she asked with panting force.

He gave her a quick smile; the glamour of all his visions and hopes transfigured the moment.

“As I am sure of God,” he said. He raised the cold, mittened hand from the fence and kissed it.

“Ah, Luc,” she said below her breath, “Luc!”

They went slowly back towards the fÊte with the sun behind them and their shadows long across the grass before them, and all the air circled with glory and the ineffable light of the setting sun.

As they entered the grounds of the fair they met the old Marquis and Joseph.

If Luc had needed any completion of his happiness he would have found it in the radiant demeanour of his father, whose every wish had been now fulfilled and satisfied. He did not know of Luc’s correspondence with M. de Voltaire; in Aix, Luc attended Mass, and never mentioned the new philosophy that guided Paris. There was nothing to trouble the elder M. de Vauvenargues’s touching pleasure in his sons.

Coloured lamps began to appear in the trees, mingling their twinkling beams with the sanguine fires of the sun, and music sounded with renewed gaiety from the gaudy tents.

Luc de Clapiers was content.