was now so accustomed to such sounds, that, ordinarily, he would have paid no attention to it, but his heart was for the moment softened by the recollection of Agnelette, and he felt more disposed than usual to pity; as it happened also he was near the place where he had first seen the gentle child, and this helped to awaken his kinder nature.
He ran to the spot whence the cry had come, and as he leaped from the underwood into the deep forest-lane near Ham, he saw a woman struggling with an immense wolf which had thrown her on the ground. Thibault could not have said why he was so agitated at this sight, nor why his heart beat more violently than usual; he rushed forward and seizing the animal by the throat hurled it away from its victim, and then lifting the woman in his arms, he carried her to the side of the lane and laid her on the slope. Here a ray of moonlight, breaking through the clouds, fell on the face of the woman he had saved, and Thibault saw that it was Agnelette. Near to the spot was the spring in which Thibault had once gazed at himself, and had seen the first red hair; he ran to it, took up water in his hands, and threw it into the woman’s face. Agnelette opened her eyes, gave a cry of terror, and tried to rise and flee.
“What!” cried the Wolf-leader, as if he were still Thibault the shoe-maker, “you do not know me again, Agnelette?”
“Ah! yes indeed, I know you, Thibault; and it is because I know who you are,” cried the young woman, “that I am afraid!”
Then throwing herself on her knees, and clasping her hands: “Oh do not kill me, Thibault!” she cried, “do not kill me! it would be such dreadful trouble for the poor old grandmother! Thibault, do not kill me!”
The Wolf-leader stood overcome with consternation; up to this hour he had not fully realised the hideous renown which he had gained; but the terror which the sight of him inspired in the woman who had loved him and whom he still loved, filled him with a horror of himself.
“I, kill you, Agnelette!” he said, “just when I have snatched you from death! Oh! how you must hate and despise me for such a thought to enter your head.”
“I do not hate you, Thibault,” said the young woman, “but I hear such things about you, that I feel afraid of you.”
“And do they say nothing of the infidelity which has led Thibault to commit such crimes?”
“I do not understand you,” said Agnelette looking at Thibault with her large eyes, blue as the heavens.
“What!” exclaimed Thibault, “you do not understand that I loved you—that I adored you Agnelette, and that the loss of you sent me out of my mind?”
“If you loved me, if you adored me, Thibault, what prevented you from marrying me?”
“The spirit of evil,” muttered Thibault.
“I too loved you,” continued the young woman, “and I suffered cruelly waiting for you.”
Thibault heaved a sigh.
“You loved me, Agnelette?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied the young woman with her soft voice and gentle eyes.
“But now, all is over,” said Thibault, “and you love me no more.”
“Thibault,” answered Agnelette, “I no longer love you, because it is no longer right to love you; but one cannot always forget one’s first love as one would wish.”
“Agnelette!” cried Thibault, trembling all over, “be careful what you say!”
“Why should I be careful what I say, since it is the truth,” said the girl with an innocent shake of the head. “The day you told me that you wished to make me your wife, I believed you, Thibault; for why should I think that you would lie to me when I had just done you a service? Then, later I met you, but I did not go in search of you; you came to me, you spoke words of love to me, you were the first to refer to the promise that you had made me. And it was not my fault either, Thibault, that I was afraid of that ring which you wore, which was large enough for you and yet, oh, it was horrible! not big enough for one of my fingers.”
“Would you like me not to wear this ring any more?” said Thibault. “Would you like me to throw it away?” And he began trying to pull it off his finger, but as it had been too small to go on Agnelette’s finger, so now it was too small to be taken off Thibault’s. In vain he struggled with it, and tried to move it with his teeth; the ring seemed rivetted to his finger for all eternity.
Thibault saw that it was no use trying to get rid of it; it was a token of compact between himself and the black wolf, and with a sigh he let his arms fall hopelessly to his sides.
“That day,” went on Agnelette, “I ran away; I know that I was wrong to do so, but I was no longer mistress of myself after seeing that ring and more still....” She lifted her eyes as she spoke, looking timidly up at Thibault’s hair. Thibault was bare-headed, and, by the light of the moon Agnelette could see that it was no longer a single hair that shone red as the flames of hell, but that half the hair on Thibault’s head was now of this devil’s colour.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, drawing back, “Thibault! Thibault! What has happened to you since I last saw you?”
“Agnelette!” cried Thibault throwing himself down with his face to the ground, and holding his head between his hands, “I could not tell any human creature, not even a priest what has happened to me since then; but to Agnelette, all I can say is: Agnelette! Agnelette! have pity on me, for I have been most unhappy!”
Agnelette went up to him and took his hands in hers.
“You did love me then? You did love me?” he cried.
“What can I do, Thibault!” said the girl with the same sweetness and innocence as before. “I took you at your word, and every time I heard someone knocking at our hut door, I thought it was you come to say to the old grandmother, ‘Mother, I love Agnelette, Agnelette loves me; will you give her to me for my wife?’ ”
“Then when I went and opened the door, and found that it was not you, I used to go into a corner and cry.”
“And now, Agnelette, now?”
“Now,” she answered. “Now, Thibault, it may seem strange, but in spite of all the terrible tales that are told about you, I have not been really frightened; I was sure that you could not wish any harm to me, and I was walking boldly through the forest, when that dreadful beast from which you saved me, suddenly sprang upon me.”
“But how is it that you are near your old home? do you not live with your husband?”
“We lived together for a while at Vez, but there was no room there for the grandmother; and so I said to my husband, ‘the grandmother must be thought of first; I must go back to her; when you wish to see me you will come.’ ”
“And he consented to that arrangement?”
“Not at first, but I pointed out to him that the grandmother is seventy years of age; that if she were only to live another two or three years, God grant it may be more! it would only be two or three years of some extra trouble for us, whereas, in all probability we had long years of life before us. Then he understood that it was right to give to those that had least.”
But all the while that Agnelette was giving this explanation, Thibault could think of nothing
