Vane was a flippant young fellow, with a French education; fond of the world, of which, as he then thought, he knew much. Yet the _Figaro_ and the Bois de Boulogne and the _Palais-Royal_, or even the _Français_, did not seem to satisfy him, that day. And all for a little "Mees Anglaise!" How his friends would laugh at him! He was very young--they would say; very young for a _grande passion_. And then they would laugh again. But Vane felt sure that he should never get over it. What the deuce did fellows do in his position? He felt a wild desire for adventure and excitement; but excitement and adventure were expensive; unless there happened to be a war, and you went officially. But he had not many illusions of romance in war. He knew men who had been at Woerth and Gravelotte. Then there was travel. But this, also, was expensive. Old Prunier, the Professor, had made an expedition through Soudan the year before, and it had cost him eight hundred thousand francs. Moreover, you had to be up on rocks and beetles and things, to make your trip of any use to the world. And Vane had not yet given up all idea of being of use in the world. Besides, even Prunier's expedition had not ended in much, except a row with the Portuguese missionaries on the subject of the slave trade. These Christian slavers had met Prunier's remonstrances with the plausible argument that it was better for the negroes to be slaves in a Christian country, and save their souls, than free on earth and damned when they died. Prunier had consequently reported a crying need for a better article of missionary in Central Africa. But Vane could not go as a missionary. He felt that his confidence in Providence, at that moment, was not hardy enough to bear transplanting into the native South African mind, through the medium of a Turanian dialect. He might seek the land of his nativity, and make his four thousand a year, eight thousand. His father's business, for the moment, lay in Bellefontaine. He did not in the least know where Bellefontaine was, but the name had a civilized sound. And she was going to Switzerland.