This boy had ascended further down on the corridor train. Cynthia was riding second class instead of third for it was a long trip from the Pyrenees to Carcassonne. Later in the afternoon she noticed him in the very next compartment, and still later passed him in the corridor, leaning listlessly against the long window. The last time before Carcassonne she noticed him on the platform of a tiny way-station where he stopped to buy a flower from a little girl and for the first time, he smiled. Cynthia was startled at that smile, so white and sudden and flashing. “Why, he doesn’t look cross and unhappy at all!” she thought. “Somebody ought to tell him to smile more often!” But she hadn’t seen him smile again in all the weeks since then. * * * * * It might have been a very happy evening, but for Miss Comstock, Serena’s Aunt Anna. She was a pretty, plump little Southerner, carefully rouged and powdered and manicured, exquisitely dressed, with manners as sleek as the fur of a well tended cat. But her manners didn’t somehow put you at your ease, they just made you feel crude and ill bred by contrast. Miss Comstock’s slow drawl, even more pronouncedly of the south than Serena’s, was as purring as a kitten’s song of content, and she appeared to be intensely interested in all her guest had been and done and seen. The hotel was much more pretentious than Cynthia’s humble Cheval Blanc, with corridors choked with palm trees and hanging baskets; with delicious food; and with a great yellow cat on the front mat attesting to the excellence of the cuisine. Cynthia thought the cat’s smug countenance bore a fantastic resemblance to Serena’s Aunt Anna, but she wouldn’t have trusted him alone with a canary. “How wonderful to be an artist, wonderful to do as you like with your life, no cares, no responsibilities, no ties!” gushed Aunt Anna over their coffee on the terrace. Cynthia rudely thought “Oh yeah,” and remembered the cover she must send back to the States every month and all the other work she had accomplished in Europe, but said nothing. “You know I always had a fancy to be an artist. But once I had an artist in love with me,” and she sighed romantically. “Lots of people in love with you, Auntie,” murmured Serena, in so dutiful a tone that Cynthia wondered how many hundred times she had made the same remark. Someone was playing a violin in the café across the street, the lights and the sound of voices streamed out across the little square beyond the hotel terrace and a big yellow moon swam up behind the plane trees. The streets were full of people coming and going, for tonight was Saturday when all the town felt free to play.