Her breast heaved, her colour came, involuntarily she checked her horse, as if she would return to him, and speak to him.

Then the Carlats and the others closed up behind her, Badelon's monotonous "Forward, Madame, _en avant_!" proclaimed the day's journey begun, and she saw him no more.
Nevertheless, the motionless figure, looming Homeric through the fog, with gleams of wet light reflected from the steel about it, dwelt long in her mind.

The road which Badelon followed, slowly at first, and with greater speed as the horses warmed to their work, and the women, sore and battered resigned themselves to suffering, wound across a flat expanse broken by a few hills.

These were little more than mounds, and for the most part were veiled from sight by the low-lying sea-mist, through which gnarled and stunted oaks rose mysterious, to fade as strangely.

Weird trees they were, with branches unlike those of this world's trees, rising in a grey land without horizon or limit, through which our travellers moved, weary phantoms in a clinging nightmare.