not yet set sail. In a dream she moved down to the beach. She saw him
open his eyes and stare at her incredulously. "I am going to break this
beauty," she breathed alone, and put out her hand and launched the ship.
He was by her side, the silence broken, the voyage begun.




CHAPTER X


FANNY ROBBED AND RESCUED

Clouds, yellow, mauve and blue, hung ominously over the road to Nancy.
The valley was filled with shades, but the road itself gleamed like a
bleached bone in a ditch. Seated upon the dashboard of her wounded car,
Fanny had drummed her heels for warmth since morning, and seemed likely
soon to drum them upon a carpet of snow. Beneath the car a dark stream
of oil marked the road, and the oil still dripped from the differential
case, where the back axle lay in two halves.

"I will telephone to your garage," her "client" had promised, as he
climbed on to a passing lorry and continued his journey into Nancy. With
that she had to be content, while she waited, first without her lunch,
and then without her tea, for the breakdown lorry which his telephone
message would eventually bring to her aid. Now it was nearly four
o'clock. She had been hungry, but was hungry no longer. The bitter cold
made her forehead ache, and though every moment the blue and mauve
shades thickened upon the sky no flake of snow had fallen.