The latest waking impression left on Jim's fancy is that it is the golden rule of Elizabeth Le Marchant's life to comply with any and every request that is made to her; moreover, that in her mind the boundary-line which parts the permitted from the unpermitted is not so clearly defined as, did she belong to him (the naked hypothesis makes his strait-laced heart give a jump), he should wish it to be. If on the morrow, with the sun shining and the leaf-shadows dancing on the fretted balcony-wall, he invite her to some fresh junket, he is sure that she will readily and joyfully acquiesce; that her spirits will go up like rockets at the prospect; and that her one anxiety will be that she may be sure to hit in her choice upon the form of dissipation most congenial to him. He will therefore not invite her. He will have a greater care for her reputation than apparently she has for it herself. Not until the return of her parents, not until the difficulties of intercourse with her are centupled, and the pleasure minimized, will he again seek her. To put himself beyond the reach of temptation, he sets off immediately after breakfast on a long walking expedition, which he means to occupy the whole of the daylight hours. He wanders about the great plain of the Metidje; he visits a Kabyle village, with its hovels cowering among its hideous fat-fleshed cactus; later on in the afternoon he finds himself in the little French hamlet of Biermandreis, and finally drops down upon the Jardin d'Essai, that delightful botanic garden which is one of the many blessings for which Algerian France has to thank the much-vilipended Napoleon III. It is difficult for even the reddest Republican to think hardly of that dead ruler as he walks down the avenue of gigantic palms that lead, straight as a die, to where, like a deep blue gem far away, the Mediterranean shows "No bigger than an agate stone On the forefinger of an alderman." Jim walks along beneath the huge date-palms that give him a crick in the neck to gape up at ere he can perceive their towering head of waving plumes far up against the blue. They remind him absurdly of the pictures in the missionary books of his youth--the palm-tree, the log cabin, the blackamoors, and the missionary in a palm hat. Is _he_ the missionary, and is this inky negress in a black bonnet, scarcely distinguishable from her face, his one catechumen? Alternating with the date are superb fan-palms, of which it is difficult to realize that it is their stunted, puny brothers which, anxiously tended, sponged, and cosseted, drag out a languid existence in London drawing-rooms. Among their Titan fans lies their mighty fruit, like a bunch of grapes, a yard and a half long, strung upon ropes of yellow worsted.