all the friends and reminiscences of her old life, she might learn to
understand herself. How? She did not know. She did not seek to know.
Here was a vague pilgrimage, as many pilgrimages are in this world--the
journey of the searcher who knew not what she sought. And so now she lay
in the dark, and heard the rustle of the warm African rain, and smelt
the perfumes rising from the ground, and felt that the unknown was very
near her--the unknown with all its blessed possibilities of change.



CHAPTER II

Long before dawn the Italian waiter rolled off his little bed, put a cap
on his head, and knocked at Domini's and at Suzanne Charpot's doors.

It was still dark, and still raining, when the two women came out to get
into the carriage that was to take them to the station. The place de la
Marine was a sea of mud, brown and sticky as nougat. Wet palms dripped
by the railing near a desolate kiosk painted green and blue. The sky was
grey and low. Curtains of tarpaulin were let down on each side of the
carriage, and the coachman, who looked like a Maltese, and wore a round
cap edged with pale yellow fur, was muffled up to the ears. Suzanne's
round, white face was puffy with fatigue, and her dark eyes, generally
good-natured and hopeful, were dreary, and squinted slightly, as she
tipped the Italian waiter, and handed her mistress's dressing-bag and
rug into the carriage. The waiter stood an the discoloured step, yawning
from ear to ear. Even the tip could not excite him. Before the carriage
started he had gone into the hotel and banged the door. The horses
trotted quickly through the mud, descending the hill. One of the
tarpaulin curtains had been left unbuttoned by the coachman. It flapped