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“She has regained nothing very valuable,” said the Friar, with a shrug, “Alone in Acaire!” But John Bulmer had assisted the woman to her feet, and had given a little cry at sight of her face, and now he stood quite motionless, holding both her unfettered hands.

“You!” he said. And when speech returned to him, after a lengthy interval, he spoke with odd irrelevance. “Now I appear to understand why God created me.”

He was puzzled. For there had come to him, unheralded and simply, a sense of something infinitely greater than his mind could conceive; and analysis might only pluck at it, impotently, as a wearied swimmer might pluck at the sides of a well. Ormskirk and Ormskirk’s powers now somehow dwindled from the zone of serious consideration, as did the radiant world, and even the woman who stood before him; trifles, these: and his contentment spurned the stars to know that, somehow, this woman and he were but a part, an infinitesimal part, of a scheme which was ineffably vast and perfect…. That was the knowledge he sensed, unwordably, as he regarded this woman now.

She was tall, just as tall as he. It was a blunt-witted devil who whispered John Bulmer that, inch paralleling inch, the woman is taller than the man and subtly renders him absurd; and that in a decade this woman would be stout. There was no meaning now in any whispering save hers. John Bulmer perceived, with a blurred thrill,–as if of memory, as if he were recollecting something once familiar to him, a great while ago,–that the girl was tall and deep-bosomed, and that her hair was dark, all crinkles, but (he somehow knew) very soft to the touch. The full oval of her face had throughout the rich tint of cream, so that he now understood the blowziness of pink cheeks; but her mouth was vivid. It was a mouth not wholly deficient in attractions, he estimated. Her nose managed to be Roman without overdoing it. And her eyes, candid and appraising, he found to be the color that blue is in Paradise; it was odd their lower lids should be straight lines, so that when she laughed her eyes were converted into right-angled triangles; and it was still more odd that when you gazed into them your reach of vision should be extended until you saw without effort for miles and miles.

And now for a longish while these eyes returned his scrutiny, without any trace of embarrassment; and whatever may have been the thoughts of Mademoiselle de Puysange, she gave them no expression. But presently the girl glanced down toward the dead man.

“It was you who killed him?” she said. “You!”

“I had that privilege,” John Bulmer admitted. “And on Thursday afternoon, God willing, I shall kill the other.”

“You are kind, Monsieur Bulmer. And I am not ungrateful. And for that which happened yesterday I entreat your pardon.”

“I can pardon you for calling me a lackey, mademoiselle, only upon condition that you permit me to be your lackey for the remainder of your jaunt. Poictesme appears a somewhat too romantic country for unaccompanied women to traverse in any comfort.”

“My thought to a comma,” the Dominican put in,–“unaccompanied ladies do not ordinarily drop from the forest oaks like acorns. I said as much to Cazaio a half-hour ago. Look you, we two and Michault,–who formerly incited this carcass and, from what I know of him, is by this time occupying hell’s hottest gridiron,–were riding peacefully toward Beauséant. Then this lady pops out of nowhere, and Cazaio promptly expresses an extreme admiration for her person.”

“The rest,” John Bulmer said, “I can imagine. Oh, believe me, I look forward to next Thursday!”

“But for you,” the girl said, “I would now be the prisoner of that devil upon the Taunenfels! Three to one you fought,–and you conquered! I have misjudged you, Monsieur Bulmer. I had thought you only an indolent old gentleman, not very brave,–because–“