She had been making preparations for spending the summer in a little village near Amsterdam, to paint. 'I can't go now,' cried Valentia. 'Corrie Sayles is going home, and there's no one else I can go with. And I can't go alone. Where are you going?' 'I? I have no plans.... I never make plans.' They paused, looking at the reflections in the water. Then she said,-- 'I don't see why you shouldn't come to Holland with me!' He did not know what to think; he knew she had been reading the Symposium. 'After all,' she said, 'there's no reason why one shouldn't go away with a man as well as with a woman.' His French friends would have suggested that there were many reasons why one should go away with a woman rather than a man; but, like his companion, Ferdinand looked at it in the light of pure friendship. 'When one comes to think of it, I really don't see why we shouldn't. And the mere fact of staying at the same hotel can make no difference to either of us. We shall both have our work--you your painting, and I my play.' As they considered it, the idea was distinctly pleasing; they wondered that it had not occurred to them before. Sauntering homewards, they discussed the details, and in half an hour had decided on the plan of their journey, the date and the train. Next day Valentia went to say good-bye to the old French painter whom all the American girls called Popper. She found him in a capacious dressing-gown, smoking cigarettes. 'Well, my dear,' he said, 'what news?' 'I'm going to Holland to paint windmills.' 'A very laudable ambition. With your mother?' 'My good Popper, my mother's in Cincinnati. I'm going with Mr White.' 'With Mr White?' He raised his eyebrows. 'You are very frank about it.' 'Why--what do you mean?' He put on his glasses and looked at her carefully. 'Does it not seem to you a rather--curious thing for a young girl of your age to go away with a young man of the age of Mr Ferdinand White?' 'Good gracious me! One would think I was doing something that had never been done before!' 'Oh, many a young man has gone travelling with a young woman, but they generally start by a night train, and arrive at the station in different cabs.' 'But surely, Popper, you don't mean to insinuate--Mr White and I are going to Holland as friends.' 'Friends!' He looked at her more curiously than ever. 'One can have a man friend as well as a girl friend,' she continued. 'And I don't see why he shouldn't be just as good a friend.' 'The danger is that he become too good.' 'You misunderstand me entirely, Popper; we are friends, and nothing but friends.' 'You are entirely off your head, my child.' 'Ah! you're a Frenchman, you can't understand these things. We are different.' 'I imagine that you are human beings, even though England and America respectively had the intense good fortune of seeing your birth.'