the olive-trees, and the deep-green velvet patch of firs beyond, towards
the sea, and wonder at life.

She longed to go to the islands--anywhere beyond--and one day she read
_Jean d'Agrève_; and after that she wondered what Love was. It took a
mighty hold upon her imagination. It seemed to her it must mean Life.

It was the beginning of May before Josiah Brown thought of leaving for
Paris. England would be their destination, but the doctors assured him a
month of Paris would break the change of climate with more safety than
if they crossed the Channel at once.

Costebelle was a fairyland of roses as they drove to the station, and
peace had descended upon Theodora. She had fallen into her place, a
place occupied by many wives before her with irritable, hypochondriacal
husbands.

She had often been to Paris in her maiden days; she knew it from the
point of view of a cheap boarding-house and snatched meals. But the
unchecked gayety of the air and the _façon_ had not been tarnished by
that. She had played in the Tuilleries Gardens and watched Ponchinello
at the Rond Point, and later been taken once or twice to dine at a cheap
café in the Bois by papa. And once she had gone to Robinson on a coach
with him and some aristocratic acquaintances of his, and eaten luncheon
up the tree, and that was a day of the gods and to be remembered.

But now they were going to an expensive, well-managed private hotel in
the Avenue du Bois, suitable to invalids, and it poured with rain as
they drove from the Gare de Lyon.