face was the colour of ashes. Still he smiled. 'I thank you, Madame,' he
said, 'infinitely; everyone knows that Madame Dupin is kind; but when it
is done, I shall be free.'

'I am sure, M. Lecamus, that my husband--that M. le Maire--would not
wish you to trouble yourself, to be hurried--'

'No,' he said, 'not he, but I. Who else could write what I have to
write? It must be done while it is day.'

'Then there is plenty of time, M. Lecamus. All the best of the day is
yet to come; it is still morning. If you could but get as far as La
Clairière. There we would nurse you--restore you.'

He shook his head. 'You have enough on your hands at La Clairière,' he
said; and then, leaning upon the stones, he began to write again with
his pencil. After a time, when he stopped, I ventured to ask--'Monsieur
Lecamus, is it, indeed, Those----whom we have known, who are in Semur?'

He turned his dim eyes upon me. 'Does Madame Dupin,' he said, 'require
to ask?'

'No, no. It is true. I have seen and heard. But yet, when a little time
passes, you know? one wonders; one asks one's self, was it a dream?'

'That is what I fear,' he said. 'I, too, if life went on, might ask,
notwithstanding all that has occurred to me, Was it a dream?'

'M. Lecamus, you will forgive me if I hurt you. You saw--_her_?'