"You talk as if you had been born a hundred years ago, and had never heard of--still less gone through--the late war. What the----" she paused, then thrust her face into mine, so that when she spoke I felt her breath on my cheek, "What the _Hell_ do you think I care about the rabble of Clermont-Ferrand?" That she would walk undismayed into a den of hyenas or Bolsheviks or Temperance Reformers or any other benighted savages I was perfectly aware. That she would be perfectly able to fend for herself I have no doubt. But still, among the uneducated dregs of the sugar-less, match-less, tobacco-less populace of a French provincial town who attributed most of their misfortunes to the grasping astuteness of England, we were not peculiarly beloved. This I explained to her, while she continued to smile pityingly. It was all the more incentive to adventure. If I had assured her that she would be torn limb from limb, like an inconvincible aristocrat flaunting abroad during the early days of the French Revolution, she would have grown enthusiastic. Finally, in desperation because, in my own way, I was fond of Auriol, I put down a masculine and protecting foot. "You're not going there without me, anyhow," said I. "I've been waiting for that polite offer for the last half hour," she replied. What I said, I said to myself--to the midmost self of my inmost being. I am not going to tell you what it was. This isn't the secret history of my life. A cloud came up over the shoulder of the hills. We descended to the miniature valley of Royat. "It's going to rain," I said. "Let it," said Auriol unconcerned. Then began as dreary an evening as I ever have spent. We dined, long before anybody else, in a tempest of rain which sent down the thermometer Heaven knows how many degrees. Half-way through dinner we were washed from the terrace into the empty dining-room. There was thunder and lightning _ad libitum._ "A night like this--it's absurd," said I. "The absurder the better," she replied. "You stay at home, Tony dear. You're a valetudinarian. I'll look after myself." But this could not be done. I have my obstinacies as mulish as other people's. "If you go, I go." "As you have, according to your pampered habit, bought a car from now till midnight, I don't see how we can fail to keep dry and warm." I had no argument left. Of course, I hate to swallow an early and rapid dinner. One did such things in the war, gladly dislocating an elderly digestion in the service of one's country. In peace time one demands a compensating leisure. But this would be comprehensible only to a well-trained married woman. My misery would have been outside Auriol's ken. I meekly said nothing. The world of young women knows nothing of its greatest martyrs.