“And now you’ll rest?” “Now I’ll rest.” With that--their hands just clasping--she guided him gently to the door, and stood waiting till she heard his step go down the stair. Then she turned back into the room and opened the door of her bedroom. The maid was there, preparing a becoming tea-gown. She had no doubt conjectured that Mr. Landers would be coming back for dinner. “Aline! Tomorrow’s steamer--it’s not too late to call up the office?” The maid stood staring, incredulous, the shimmering dress on her arm. “The steamer--not tomorrow’s steamer?” “The steamer on which I had taken passages,” Mrs. Clephane explained, hurriedly reaching for the telephone book. Aline’s look seemed to say that this was beyond all reasonable explanation. “But those passages--Madame ordered me to give them up. Madame said we were not to sail till next week.” “Never mind. At this season there’s no crowd. You must call up at once and get them back.” “Madame is not really thinking of sailing tomorrow? The boat leaves at six in the morning.” Mrs. Clephane almost laughed in her face. “I’m not thinking of doing it; I’m going to do it. Ah, here’s the number--” She unhooked the receiver. XXX. Kate Clephane was wakened by the slant of Riviera sun across her bed. The hotel was different; it was several rungs higher on the ladder than the Minorque et l’Univers, as its name--the Petit Palais--plainly indicated. The bedroom, too, was bigger, more modern, more freshly painted; and the corner window of the tiny adjoining _salon_ actually clipped a wedge of sea in its narrow frame. So much was changed for the better in Mrs. Clephane’s condition; in other respects, she had the feeling of having simply turned back a chapter, and begun again at the top of the same dull page. Her maid, Aline, was obviously of the same opinion; in spite of the more commodious room, and the sitting-room with its costly inset of sea, Mrs. Clephane had not recovered her lost prestige in Aline’s estimation. “What was the good of all the fuss if it was to end in _this_?” Aline’s look seemed to say, every morning when she brought in the breakfast-tray. Even the fact that letters now lay on it more frequently, and that telegrams were no longer considered epoch-making, did not compensate for the general collapse of Aline’s plans and ambitions. When one had had a good roof over one’s head, and a good motor at one’s door, what was the sense of bolting away from them at a moment’s notice and coming back to second-rate hotels and rattling taxis, with all the loss of consequence implied? Aline remained icily silent when her mistress, after a few weeks at the Petit Palais, mentioned that she had written to enquire about prices at Dinard for the summer.