“Most awfully,” said Fanny, fervently, as she leaned back, wondering why the way George put things made them sound so very nice. “R-right, _bien_.” He was beside her. “_Allay_,” he cried gaily, and off they went. Off they went, spanking along lightly, under the green and gold shade of the plane trees, through the small streets that smelled of lemons and fresh coffee, past the fountain square where women, with water-pots lifted, stopped talking to gaze after them, round the corner past the café, with its pink and white umbrellas, green tables, and blue siphons, and so to the sea front. There a wind, light, warm, came flowing over the boundless sea. It touched George, and Fanny it seemed to linger over while they gazed at the dazzling water. And George said, “Jolly, isn’t it?” And Fanny, looking dreamy, said, as she said at least twenty times a day since they—came abroad: “Isn’t it extraordinary to think that here we are quite alone, away from everybody, with nobody to tell us to go home, or to—to order us about except ourselves?” George had long since given up answering “Extraordinary!” As a rule he merely kissed her. But now he caught hold of her hand, stuffed it into his pocket, pressed her fingers, and said, “I used to keep a white mouse in my pocket when I was a kid.” “Did you?” said Fanny, who was intensely interested in everything George had ever done. “Were you very fond of white mice?” “Fairly,” said George, without conviction. He was looking at something, bobbing out there beyond the bathing steps. Suddenly he almost jumped in his seat. “Fanny!” he cried. “There’s a chap out there bathing. Do you see? I’d no idea people had begun. I’ve been missing it all these days.” George glared at the reddened face, the reddened arm, as though he could not look away. “At any rate,” he muttered, “wild horses won’t keep me from going in to-morrow.” Fanny’s heart sank. She had heard for years of the frightful dangers of the Mediterranean. It was an absolute death-trap. Beautiful, treacherous Mediterranean. There it lay curled before them, its white, silky paws touching the stones and gone again.... But she’d made up her mind long before she was married that never would she be the kind of woman who interfered with her husband’s pleasures, so all she said was, airily, “I suppose one has to be very up in the currents, doesn’t one?” “Oh, I don’t know,” said George. “People talk an awful lot of rot about the danger.” But now they were passing a high wall on the land side, covered with flowering heliotrope, and Fanny’s little nose lifted. “Oh, George,” she breathed. “The smell! The most divine....” “Topping villa,” said George. “Look, you can see it through the palms.” “Isn’t it rather large?” said Fanny, who somehow could not look at any villa except as a possible habitation for herself and George.