artifice of all besides. The trees were neatly surrounded by bushes,
and the bushes by trim beds of flowers. But the trees grew without
abandonment, as though conscious of the decorative scheme they helped to
form. It was autumn, and some were leafless already. Many of the flowers
were withered. The formal garden reminded one of a light woman, no longer
young, who sought, with faded finery, with powder and paint, to make a
brave show of despair. It had those false, difficult smiles of uneasy
gaiety, and the pitiful graces which attempt a fascination that the
hurrying years have rendered vain.

Dr Porhoët drew more closely round his fragile body the heavy cloak which
even in summer he could not persuade himself to discard. The best part of
his life had been spent in Egypt, in the practice of medicine, and the
frigid summers of Europe scarcely warmed his blood. His memory flashed
for an instant upon those multi-coloured streets of Alexandria; and then,
like a homing bird, it flew to the green woods and the storm-beaten
coasts of his native Brittany. His brown eyes were veiled with sudden
melancholy.

'Let us wait here for a moment,' he said.

They took two straw-bottomed chairs and sat near the octagonal water
which completes with its fountain of Cupids the enchanting artificiality
of the Luxembourg. The sun shone more kindly now, and the trees which
framed the scene were golden and lovely. A balustrade of stone gracefully
enclosed the space, and the flowers, freshly bedded, were very gay. In
one corner they could see the squat, quaint towers of Saint Sulpice, and
on the other side the uneven roofs of the Boulevard Saint Michel.

The palace was grey and solid. Nurses, some in the white caps of their