A little reassured, Nicolette went away at last, promising to come again the next day. Micheline accompanied her as far as the main door: the girl had said absolutely nothing during the long and painful scene which had put before her so grim a picture of the past: she was so self-centred, so reserved, that not even to Nicolette did she reveal what she had felt: only she clung more closely than even before to the friend whom she loved: and when the two girls finally said “good night” to one another they remained for a long time clasped in one another’s arms.
“Bertrand will be all right now,” Nicolette whispered in the end, “I don’t think old Madame will want to see him, and he is so tired that he will not even think. But do not leave him too much alone, Micheline. Promise!”
Strange that it should all have happened in the grey dawn of a cold winter’s morning. Nicolette, when she came home afterwards and thought it all out, marvelled whether the grey sky, the muffled cadence of the trees, the mysterious pallidity of the woods were a portent of the future. And yet if it had to be done all over again, she would not have acted differently, and minute by minute, hour by hour, it seemed as if destiny had guided her—or God’s hand, perhaps! Oh, surely it was God’s hand.
She rose early because she had passed a restless, miserable night, also her head ached and she longed for fresh air. It was still dark, but Margaï was astir, and a bright fire was blazing in the kitchen when Nicolette came down. She was not hungry, but to please Margaï she drank some warm milk and ate the home-made bread, and when the cold morning light first peeped in through the open window, she set out for a walk.
She went down the terraced gradients into the valley, and turned to wander up the river bank, keeping her shawl closely wrapped around her shoulders, as it was very cold. The Lèze, swelled by the early winter’s rains, tossed and tumbled in its bed with fretful turbulence. The snow lay deep in untidy little heaps in all sorts of unexpected nooks and crannies, but the smooth surfaces of the boulders were shiny with dewy frost and the blades of the rough grass were heavy with moisture.
The air was very still, and slowly the silvery dawn crept up behind the canopy of clouds, and transformed it into a neutral tinted veil that hung loosely over the irregular heights of Luberon and concealed the light that lay beyond. One by one the terraced slopes emerged from the pall of night, and the moist blades of grass turned to strings of tiny diamonds. A pallid argent hue lay over mountain and valley, and every leaf of every tree became a looking-glass that mirrored the colourless opalescence of the sky.