So they go home. It is near sun-setting as they drive along the Boulevard de la République, the fitting end to so princely a day. At the quay the moored vessels lie, their masts and spars making a dark design against an ineffable evening sky of mother-of-pearl and translucent pink. The sea, which to-day has not been of sapphire, but of "watchet-blue," pierced and shot with white, now copies exactly the heavens. It, too, shades from opal to translucent pink. How many changes of raiment there are in the wardrobe of the great wet mother! "If I had as many gowns as the Mediterranean, how well-dressed I should be!" says Elizabeth, with a smile. It is the first time she had spoken since they had set off on their return-drive. She is lying back, with her hands carefully shielding in her lap a few little crockery pots that she has bought of a fat Turk for some children at her hotel Her face looks tired; and yet over its small area is spread an expression of content that makes his heart warm. Is it only the pageant of sky and ocean that has called forth that look of real, if passing, happiness on the features of her who is always so tremblingly sensitive an instrument for all influences of beauty and grandeur to play upon? or has his own neighbourhood anything to say to it? Before he can give himself an answer to this anxious question, she speaks again. "You do not mind my not talking, do you?" she asks, half apologetically, and yet with a confidence in his sympathy that still further quickens the beats of his already not very still heart. "No, I am sure you do not. Somehow--it is a great gift--you always feel in tune with one, and one does not chatter most when one is most greatly pleased, does one? Oh, what a treat you have given me!" As she speaks, her humid eyes travel from his face to where, beyond the long Atlas range, delicately toothed and cut out, rises the gold-washed snow of the Kabyle mountains, that retire majestically invisible on dull days, and only come out, candescent and regal, when the great sun rides in pomp. Above their heads wild plumes of deep rose, that it seems ridiculous to call clouds, tuft the sky. Jim's look has followed his companion's; the chins of both are in the air; the cheerful _va et vient_ of the boulevard is lost upon them. They see neither the Frenchmen nor plump Frenchwomen drinking coffee outside the cafés, nor the idle _indigènes_ leaning draped against the sea-wall. (Never does that industrious race seem to attempt any severer exertion.) "Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired." But it is brought back to life with a jump. "_Arrêtez! arrêtez!_" cries a female voice. "Jim! Jim! do you not see us? _Arrêtez! arrêtez!_"