He must be able to look old Mazarine fearlessly in the face;
he would not be the slave of opportunity. He was going to fight clean.
She was here beside him in the warm loneliness of the northern world, and
he was full-grown in body and brain, with all the human emotions alive in
him; yet he would fight clean.
Not for a half-hour, but for nearly an hour he told her what she wished
to know, while she listened in a happy dream; and when at last she lay
down, she refused his coverlet of dry grass, saying that she was quite
warm. She declared that she did not even need the coat he had taken from
the saddle of the dead horse, but he wrapped it around her, and, saying
"Goodnight" almost brusquely, marched away in the light of the dying
moon.
The night wore on. At first Louise's ears were sensitive to every sound,
and there were stirrings in the hillock by which she slept, but she
comforted herself with the thought that they were the stirrings of lonely
little waifs of nature like herself. Though she dared not let the thought
take form, yet she feared, too, the sound of human footsteps. By and by,
however, in the sweet quiet of the night and the somnolent light of the
moon, sleep captured her. When at last Orlando's footsteps did crush the
dry grass, the sound failed to reach her ears, for it was then not very
far from daylight, and she had slept for several hours.
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