to find that her magneto was broken. There was nothing for it but to push the car along into a sheltered spot, and find her way back on foot. She took a path running along the edges of a wood where the budding wayside trees gave, at least, a scant shelter. Her face streamed with sweat, and she passed her silk sleeve over her forehead and took off her cap and fanned herself. At the first opening she turned down into the woodland and here, among the trees, she walked for an hour.
Ominously still it was. Not a bird sang. But a brook went beside her, hurrying down to the Dordogne, and Jill stopped to drink at it and to bathe her smarting eyes. 'What a fool I was to let myself cry,' she muttered.
Suddenly, at a turn of the path, she stood still. This was a familiar spot. She was quite near Buissac. It was here that she had come that very morning—oh, how long ago! This was the same brook; that the same stone bridge where she had seen Marthe sitting, exhausted; where Marthe had looked at her with that dark, that heavy look.
Standing there, gazing at the bridge, a tidal wave of suffering suddenly swept all Jill's hard-held courage from her heart, and for a long, suffocating moment it seemed to her that she hated Marthe Ludérac.
What had been the fatal darkness that had underlain their morning encounter if it had not been the knowledge that they were for ever fixed in enmity? Marthe loved Dick. Marthe had taken Dick from her. How
