Mills' face remained grave. Very grave. I was amused at those
little venomous outbreaks of the fatal Mr. Blunt. Again I knew
myself utterly forgotten. But I didn't feel dull and I didn't even
feel sleepy. That last strikes me as strange at this distance of
time, in regard of my tender years and of the depressing hour which
precedes the dawn. We had been drinking that straw-coloured wine,
too, I won't say like water (nobody would have drunk water like
that) but, well . . . and the haze of tobacco smoke was like the
blue mist of great distances seen in dreams.

Yes, that old sculptor was the first who joined them in the sight
of all Paris. It was that old glory that opened the series of
companions of those morning rides; a series which extended through
three successive Parisian spring-times and comprised a famous
physiologist, a fellow who seemed to hint that mankind could be
made immortal or at least everlastingly old; a fashionable
philosopher and psychologist who used to lecture to enormous
audiences of women with his tongue in his cheek (but never
permitted himself anything of the kind when talking to Rita); that
surly dandy Cabanel (but he only once, from mere vanity), and
everybody else at all distinguished including also a celebrated
person who turned out later to be a swindler. But he was really a
genius. . . All this according to Mr. Blunt, who gave us all those
details with a sort of languid zest covering a secret irritation.

"Apart from that, you know," went on Mr. Blunt, "all she knew of
the world of men and women (I mean till Allegre's death) was what
she had seen of it from the saddle two hours every morning during
four months of the year or so. Absolutely all, with Allegre self-