But she did not forget the roses coloured like a sunset, that this man of resource had laid in her hand. They reposed in water, while the weary traveller, refreshed by hot water and soap more than by food, laid her aching limbs at last in a stationary and silent bed, and slept with a vigour that excluded dreams and every sensation but one of bitter hostility to the chambermaid when she came, as straitly charged, and roused her with equal vigour in time for dinner. Then the roses were promoted to a place of honour in the simplest of demi-toilets, and she made her way to the dining-room, with a strange, lost feeling at having to sit at meat with total strangers, every one of whom had something to say to every one but herself, and all of whom appeared to regard her with a savage animosity and depreciation, under which she found herself quailing to such an extent, that to assert herself she was obliged to demand salt of her next neighbour in aggressively firm tones, and, though she was unaware of it, in her best German. The dining-room was not as pleasant now as when, after a slight temporary acquaintance with soap and water, she had taken her solitary _déjeuner_ there in the morning. It was empty then, and her seat faced a row of windows looking across the ravine, all powdery on the opposite side with blue bloom of pine and olive, much alike in the strong sunlight. Through the window just opposite, the white village of Castellare gleamed on a hill-crest, above which the bare peaks of the Berceau glowed jewel-like in a pure, deep sky. Then the masses of flowers, fresh from the garden, gathered, not bought, such flowers, so full and rich and joyous of growth, and the fruit--orange and lemon, just off the bough, with the dark leaves clinging to them--how fragrant, poetic, and beautiful the whole had been. That first _déjeuner_ was a poem, contrasted with the prosaic luncheon-tables of the City of Perpetual Fog. The fruit and flowers were still there, a great bank of spiced double stocks totally effaced the thin man plaintively sipping his soup opposite. People were squeezing fresh lemons into their glasses most temptingly, but the mountains were blotted out, and the table was ringed with human faces, alien, unfriendly, grim of glance. It was the hapless Ermengarde's first appearance alone at a _table d'hote_ (Arthur always insisted on a private table in public); she was unaware that a new-comer in a pension is considered as a heathen man and a publican, an unwarrantable intruder, an encroacher upon vested rights, a probable pickpocket, a possible escaped lunatic--especially if a foreigner in British company--most especially if German.