It was the 10th of May that they arrived at Spezzia, a small picturesque town, half-Genoese and half-Florentine, at the head of a bay as smooth and blue as the loveliest sky. The season for sea-bathing had not arrived. The country round about was an enchanted solitude, the weather cool and exquisite. At sight of that beautiful, calm water, Laurent, whom the carriage journey had fatigued somewhat, decided to go by sea. They inquired about means of transportation; a small steamboat went to Genoa twice a week. Thérèse was glad that it did not start that same evening. Her patient had twenty-four hours for rest. She bade him engage a cabin on the boat for the following day. Laurent, although he still felt decidedly weak, had never been so well. He slept and ate like a child. The delicious languor of the first days of complete cure caused a blissful sort of confusion in his mind. The memory of his past life vanished like a bad dream. He felt and believed that he was radically changed forever. In this new life, he seemed not to have the faculty of suffering. He left Thérèse with a sort of triumphant joy amid his tears. This submission to the decrees of destiny was in his eyes a voluntary expiation for which she should give him due credit. He had not sought it, but he had accepted it at the moment when for the first time he realized the value of what he had hitherto failed to appreciate. He carried this craving for self-immolation so far as to tell her that she must love Palmer, that he was the best of friends and the greatest of philosophers. Then he cried abruptly: "Don't say anything, Thérèse. Don't speak to me of him! I don't feel strong enough yet to hear you say that you love him. No, keep quiet! it would kill me! But be sure that I love him, too! What more can I say?" Thérèse did not once mention Palmer's name; and when Laurent, less heroic, questioned her indirectly, she replied: "Hush! I have a secret which I will tell you later, and which is not what you think. You could not guess it, so don't try." They passed the last day rowing about the harbor of Spezzia. From time to time, they landed to pluck the lovely aromatic plants that grow in the sand even to the verge of the transparent, lazily plashing waves. Trees are rare along those lovely banks, from which mountains covered with flowering shrubs rise perpendicularly. As the heat was somewhat oppressive, they bade the boatman row toward a group of pines as soon as they spied it. They had brought their lunch, which they ate on the grass amid clumps of lavender and rosemary. The day passed like a dream; that is to say, it was brief as a moment, and yet it contained the sweetest emotions of two lives.