"The interior? Oh yes, of course. My dawdling"--more laughter--"has knocked that on the head. I have let the time for that go by. We intend to run over to Spain and see the Alhambra and the Escurial." There is a general silence. Well, it is done. Neither husband nor wife makes any effort to alter his resolution or detain him. They do not even put any questions to him as to his future projects. He has nothing to do but remove himself and allow them to resume that happy little duet which he had disturbed. "The train sets off at such an unearthly hour to-morrow morning--six o'clock or thereabouts; it would take three days to get there if it did not--that I must put my things together this afternoon. I shall see you again, of course, before I go." "Oh, of course," replies Mr. Le Marchant, in the easy and comfortable tone of one to whom it is a matter of supreme indifference whether or not that farewell meeting ever takes place, and Mrs. Le Marchant says nothing at all. He has adduced his necessary packings as an excuse for leaving them; though, indeed, they neither wished for nor asked any excuse; yet nothing is further from his intentions than to enter at once upon that occupation. She has walked to Biermandreis. In five minutes he is walking thither too. There are a couple of roads that lead there, and of course he takes the wrong one--the same, that is, that she had taken, so that, although he walks fast, yet, thanks to her start of him, he has reached the pretty little flower-shaded French village which, with its white church and its École Communale, looks as if it were taken to pieces at night and put to bed in a toy-box--he has reached it, and has, moreover, traced half his homeward way, before he overtakes her. The path by which he returns is a rough Arab track, cut in low steps up the hill, each step a mass of fossil-shells--whelk, and scallop and oyster shells, whose inhabitants died--strange thought!--before Adam saw Eden's fair light. It is a charming road, cut, in part, through the red rock, over which the southern greenery tumbles. He has approached quite close to her before she sees him. She is sitting on a camp-stool by the wayside, looking vacantly before her. Her figure is rather stooped, and her straight back bent, as if it were not worth the trouble to hold it up. Beside her, on the ground, lie a little tin colour-box and water-bottle and a drawing-board. He wishes, with a new pang, that he had not come upon her so suddenly. He is afraid that this is one of the aspects of her that will stick most pertinaciously in his memory. Catching sight of him, her whole sad, listless face lights up. "It is you! I was sure you would come. I told them to tell you where I had gone. I meant to sketch"--with a glance at her neglected implements--"but"--with a sigh--"as you see, I did not."