For a moment she contemplated suicide, but was deterred by the thought that it might be attributed to despairing love. She saw in anticipation the sentimental emotion of the salons, the absurd figure that her supposed passion would cut amid the duke's innumerable conquests, and upon her grave, dug so near the other, the Parma violets, stripped of their petals by the dandified Moessards of journalism. There remained the resource of travel, one of those journeys to countries so distant that they expatriate even the thoughts. Unluckily, she lacked money. Thereupon she remembered that, on the day following her success at the Salon, old Brahim Bey had come to see her, to make magnificent proposals to her in his master's name for divers great works to be executed at Tunis. She had said no at the moment, refusing to be tempted by Oriental prices, by a munificent hospitality, by the promise of the finest courtyard on the Bardo for a studio, surrounded by arches carved like exquisite lace. But now she was willing to accept. She had but to make a sign, the bargain was concluded at once, and after an exchange of despatches, a hasty packing-up, and closing the house, she started for the railway-station as if she were going away for a week, surprised herself by her prompt decision, pleased in all the adventurous and artistic portions of her nature by the prospect of a new life in a strange land. The bey's pleasure yacht was to await her at Genoa; and, closing her eyes in the cab, she saw in anticipation the white stones of an Italian harbor enclosing an iridescent sea, where the sunlight had a gleam of the Orient, where everything sang joyously, even to the swelling sails upon the deep. It so happened that on that day Paris was muddy and murky, drowned by one of those continuous downpours of rain which seem to have been made for it alone, to have ascended in clouds from its river, its steam, its monster breath, only to descend again in streams from its roofs, its gutters, the innumerable windows of its attics. Felicia was in haste to escape from that depressing Paris, and her feverish impatience vented itself upon the driver for not driving faster, upon the horses,--two genuine broken-down cab-horses,--and upon an inexplicable multitude of carriages and omnibuses jammed together at the approaches to Pont de la Concorde. "Go on, driver, go on." "I can't, Madame,--it's the funeral." She put her head out of the window and instantly withdrew it, in dismay. A double line of soldiers marching with guns reversed, a wilderness of helmets, of heads uncovered while an interminable procession passed. It was Mora's funeral procession. "Don't stay here. Drive around some other way," she cried to the driver.