When Aurore awakened from a long dreamless sleep it was evening. She was lying in a bed, the soft whit sheets of which smelt of dried roses and lavender. Facing her were two tall windows masked by delicate lace curtains through which the light of a street lamp came dimly peeping.

For a long time she lay here, with aching head buried in the sweet-smelling downy pillow, while, one by one, the events of this fateful day came back to her mind on the wings of memory.

The market cart. The last glimpse of the old home. The little church of Val-le-Roi. The figure that came out of the shadows. The bridegroom awaiting his bride. After that there was something of a bank, a veil through which floated the figure of Abbé Rosemonde, the altar, the flickering tallow candles, and a dark face with compelling eyes and cruel, mocking mouth. Spirit voices echoed words which her ears at the time had only vaguely heard.

"Deus Israel conjugat vos...."

"You are going to swear loyalty to me first, ma mie...."

"Wilt thou take this man to be thy lawful husband?..."

"Once the knot is tied between us you need no longer fear...."

Then the ring upon her finger. Jeannette's weeping farewells. The murmurings of the village folk. The carriole outside the churchyard gate. The long drive in silence, with her eyes fixed on the strong brown hand close to her which handled the reins and the whip - the hand of André Vallon, her husband!

Yes, it all came back now! She had slept for awhile and had mercifully forgotten, but now it all came back. After the interminable drive in the carriole over the jolting roads they had reached Nevers when the sun was already high in the heavens. In the fields just outside the town there was a stretch of ripening corn, from which a lark suddenly rose with joyful song up to the sky.

The carriole came to a halt in a nice broad street outside a house, the door of which bore on a metal plate the names JULES MIGNET and below it DOCTEUR EN MEDÉCIN. André put up his whip, threw the reins over the horses' backs, and jumped lightly down from the carriole.

"Come, ma mie," he said, and held out his arm to help her descend.

In answer to the clanging of a bell, a neatly dressed maid opened the door and greet André with a smile.

"The Citizen Doctor?" André asked. "Is he in?"

"He is busy at the hospital just now," the girl replied, "but the Citizeness is upstairs."

The small paved hall and stone staircase smelt of ripe apples and of soap. André ran up the stairs. This time he didn't say, "Come!" but Aurore nevertheless followed. She had no longer any will of her own. It seemed as if that strong brown hand was driving her with whip and reins as it had done the two horses in the carriole.

Double doors on the first landing were wide open, as André's firm footsteps rang out on the tiled floor an elderly woman came out of the room beyond. She was small and frail-looking and had slender white hands which she held out to André with the friendliest of greetings.

"Had a good journey?" she asked.

André kissed her hand and then stood aside, disclosing Aurore.

"And that is your young wife!" the old woman exclaimed, and this time her two arms extended towards Aurore, and a sweet smile lit up her pale wrinkled face. "You are right welcome, citizeness," she said. And Aurore felt two kindly arms encircling her shoulders and a friendly kiss pressed on both her cheeks.

"This is the Citizeness Mignet, ma mie," André said. "A dear, kind friend who has offered us hospitality until we can continue our journey to Paris."

"For as long as you will stay in my house, my dear," the old lady said, fondling Aurore's hand but gazing on André with eyes full of deep affection. "I don't suppose he ever told you, but your husband saved my son's life at Valmy. He lost his arm while he carried him to safety under the fire of Prussian cannon. Not only my house, but all I possess in the world is his and yours for the asking."

But while she spoke André had made good his escape. Aurore heard him clattering down the stairs.

"He is always like that," the old lady said, with her gentle smile. "He can't bear me to say a word about what we owe him, Jules and I. But one day when André is not there my son shall tell you about it, and you will be prouder of your handsome husband than you ever were before."

"But you are tired, my dear," she went on, "and here I am chattering away instead of looking after you. Come and sit down here in the sunshine while I get you a nice cup of hot coffee, or would you rather have some nice sweet chocolate?"

She led Aurore to an armchair placed by the window, through which the warm July sun came in smiling. Aurore thanked her with a wan smile, and she was not really tired and that she would prefer coffee, whereupon the old lady tripped out of the room.

And Aurore had remained sitting there with the sunshine caressing her hair and cheek, looking about her as in a dream. The room had not a great deal of furniture in it, but the few pieces that were there revealed a fastidious taste. Fine work of the Louis XIV period was displayed in a splendid bureau and a fine Boulle table, in the Aubusson carpet and tapestried chairs. There were two or three pictures on the wall which suggested the fantastic brush of Lancret, and above the fireplace a delicate mirror which must have hailed from Venice.

Aurore had the feeling that this could not be reality; that this was some kind of dreamland out of which she would presently emerge fully awake. Did people who were country doctors and bourgeois possess Boulle furniture and Lancret pictures? Of course not. At least, Aurore had never supposed that they did. Louis XIV bureaus and Aubusson carpets were to be found in ancestral châteaux and not in the plebeian houses of small provincial towns. And this old lady, who now came tripping back in her dress of soft gray silk with the exquisite lace fichu round her shoulders and beautiful cap covering her gray hair, she of a certainty was not the mother of an obscure country leech, the sort of man who, if he had been called in to attend a sick person at Marigny in the olden days, would not have been admitted to eat at Monseigneur's table. "Citizeness Mignet!" That awful word "citizeness," which had the power to arouse the most bitter resentment in the heart of every aristocrat, could surely not be applied to her.

She held in her fine which hands a cup of exquisite Sèvres china from which arose the delicious scent of steaming Mocha. Aurore took the cup with a grateful if pale little smile. She drank the coffee eagerly and felt a little better after it. only with half an ear did she listen to the old lady's pleasant chatter, out of which only a few disjointed sentences penetrator to her inner consciousness.

"Your room is quite ready, my dear.... I shall take an old woman's privilege and call you Aurore.... When you wake up in the morning... How proud you must be of your husband.... Prodigies of valour at Valmy... My son says..."

Surely, surely, none of that could be real! The old lady was just one of those fairies of which Aurore had read when she was a child in the books of M. Perrault - the fairy godmother in "Cinderella" or "The Sleeping Beauty." She would vanish presently, and she, Aurore, would wake to find herself back in her bed with the blue damask curtains in her room at Marigny. Dear, dear Maringy!

Nor was the gold ring on her finger real. There was no such person as André Vallon, who had dared to call her "ma mie" and looked down on her with such a cruel, mocking glance. She gazed down on her own hands, her left hand with that narrow gold circlet round the fourth finger; and oddly, with her right hand, she toyed with the ring, twisting it round and round.

"And now I shall take you to your room," the old lady said in her smooth, gentle voice. "Come with me, my dear."

She smiled, and her old eyes twinkled as she gave Aurore's cheeks a little pat. "You will want to be alone with your husband," she said.

And now, after all those hours, and lying on this sweet-scented bed, Aurore supposed that she did then follow the old lady out of the room and up some stairs. But of that she remember nothing. She did not even recall her first impression of this room with the tall windows veiled behind delicate lace curtains and hangings of rose Du Barry damask. Here again memory registered a blank until the moment when André Vallon came into the room.