WHEN Peregrine left Dieuporte he struck straight through the valley between the wooded slopes of the hills. The autumn morning was very fair, as we have seen. This, added to his recent escape from blackness, lent zest to his spirit. For the first time for many a long month he found his heart going out to Nature. It winged freely to meet her, as a bird escaped from a cage. He welcomed the breath of the wind upon his forehead, he exulted in the sunshine, in the good clean smell of the earth around him.

Extraordinarily light-hearted, he pursued his way, giving gay greeting to peasants as he passed them at cottage doors. The intoxication of the morning caught him; he was drunk with its beauty and brightness. Around him lay orchards aglow with red and russet apples. In one, a girl was standing on a rough ladder, gathering the fruit into a blue apron. As she worked she sang:

She sang in a low round contralto, a voice as ripe as her beauty. Peregrine, plucking the tabor from beneath his cloak, joined in with the last verse. She turned her head at the sound, gave him a gay good-morning at the end of words and music.

“So you are a musician,” quoth she.

“Of a sort,” smiled Peregrine.

“No bad sort,” she returned with a motherly air which sat well on her. “Sing you to me.”

“What should I sing?” demanded Peregrine.

“That which likes you,” returned the girl. “We ever perform best that which pleases us most.”

Peregrine laughed, and struck a couple of chords on the tabor.

“I see freedom pleasing me most at the moment,” he said. And set himself to sing:

His voice died away. The girl looked down upon him.

“A fair song,” she said appraisingly, setting her teeth in the side of a red apple. And then she laughed.

“Why do you laugh?” asked Peregrine.

She stretched one arm wide, embracing Nature, as it were.

“Because the day is very good, and because the apple is sweet, and because—because I am alive.” She bit again into the apple.

Peregrine eyed her approvingly. “Three most excellent reasons. You find happiness in life?”

“Why not?” quoth she between her munching. “Is it not well to be alive? Does not the sun shine for me, the wind blow for me, the earth bear fruit for me, the birds sing to me? Truly I find happiness in life.”

“You envy none?” asked Peregrine.

She laughed. “Whom should I envy? Old Mother Esther down yonder, who has three cows, and is toothless, and has a wart as big as a hazel-nut on her nose? Grizel Burnside, who has a husband who beats her six nights out of the seven, and half a dozen squalling brats tugging at her skirts? Lambert Groot, who they say has a bag of gold pieces he counts the while he yells with rheumatic pains? For my part, I say let Esther keep her cows and her wart and her lack of teeth; Grizel, her husband and her brats; Lambert, his gold and his rheumatism. I am happier with our one cow, my own teeth, my freedom, and my health. I’d barter no jot nor tittle of my own self for all their belongings in a heap at my feet. I am I, and glad on it.” An unconscious egoist, she faced him laughing from the ladder.

“Yet,” suggested Peregrine, “there are others rich, well-fed, and with good health,—plenty of them in the world. Do you not envy them?”

“Not I,” laughed the girl. “How know I that, for all their solid riches, they love the gold of the buttercups in April? that, for all their good feeding, they would pluck and eat blackberries from the hedges along with a juicy apple? that, for all their health they could, race the dewy meadows bare-footed, face the August sun uncovered, or meet a January snow-storm unshrinking. Sooner be myself with the likings I know, than they with tastes more than perchance foreign to me.”

“My child,” said Peregrine gaily, “I appreciate your confidence in yourself. An’ a man have confidence in himself ’twill lead him far.”

She looked at him from beneath her eyelashes. “Whither hath it led you?” she asked demurely.

This caused Peregrine a slight inward wince, brought his light statement closer to book. In a sudden flash he saw his words not too wise. Truly may confidence in himself lead a man far, and yet no nearer his goal. Her question, drawn at a venture, shot very near home. Yet he had no mind to betray this thought to the laughing girl.

“Truly,” he said airily enough, “at the moment it hath led me to the company of a very fair egoist.”

Head on one side she surveyed him, doubtful, questioning. “I know not that word,” she said.

“I see it meaning one exceeding conscious of their own personality,” remarked Peregrine. “An’ you be not conscious of yours, I stand rebuked.”

She mused a moment. “An’ you mean that I know well that I am MÉllisande the Fair, as men call me, that I take pleasure in my beauty and my health, then you need no rebuke.”

“Indeed,” said Peregrine smiling at her naÏvetÉ, “I mean that very precisely.”

“Then,” quoth she, with her ever ready laugh, “the word suits well enough.” She dropped to silence a moment; then spoke. “Whither fare you now?”

“I fear me,” said Peregrine, “that I fare on a very elusive quest.”

“What manner of quest?”

“The quest of a woman.”

“Oh!” MÉllisande opened dark eyes, braced herself against the ladder. “Tell me more,” said she interested.

“There is little enough to tell,” returned Peregrine, “and that being so, the quest appears the more mad.”

Briefly he gave her the history of the past months, eliminating matter he held undesirable to repeat. She listened, gravely intent.

“I have heard tell of the woman,” she said as he came to an end of the story, “veiled, and with quiet eyes.”

“You have heard tell of her!” cried Peregrine.

She nodded. “Listen. ’Tis my little brother who has spoken of her. Truly I have thought his words but imagining, since he is a dreamer and over-apt to fancies, at least so I have held. But more than once he has spoken of this woman, and in much the same words that you have given me. Once I thought ’twas the Blessed Virgin he had believed to see, but he assured me to the contrary. This woman, he avows, is purple-robed, her face white as jasmine flowers, and half hidden in a veil; her eyes, when she looks at you, are like moonlit lakes among mountains,—lakes unruffled by the least breath of wind. This is what my brother Aelred has told me.”

“Then,” said Peregrine very firmly, “I will speak with Aelred.”

MÉllisande pointed to the right.

“You will find him yonder, most like,” she said. “Follow the road through the village, bear upwards along a rocky path, and you will hear the sound of falling water. Make for the sound. A stream comes out of the rock near here, emptying itself into a cup-shaped hollow. ’Tis there where Aelred plays most often, or dreams rather, for he is not over-given to play, being somewhat crippled. Question him gently, and perchance he will tell you more. But he cares not to speak too freely of such matters, since men are apt to mock at him.”

“I thank you well,” said Peregrine, and turned to go.

“Not too fast,” cried MÉllisande, “first you must have reward for your song. Hold out your cloak.”

Peregrine, laughing, spread out his cloak as bidden. She tossed apples to him till he vowed he could carry no more. Bestowing them about his person, he gave merry thanks.

“Farewell, orchard egoist,” he said, “perchance we meet again.”

“Who knows!” she nodded. “Fare you well.” She saw him depart light-footed. Once again she turned singing to her apples.