After they had dined Bessie was left to her memories and musings, while the gentlemen went pacing up and down the deck in earnest conversation. It was a perfect evening. The sky was full of color, scarlet, rosy, violet, primrose--changing, fading, flushing, perpetually. And before all was gray the moon had risen and was shining in silver floods upon the sea. In the mystery of moonshine Bessie lost sight of the phantom poplars that fringe the Orne. The excitement of novelty and uncertainty routed dull thoughts, and her fancy pruned its wings for a flight into the future. In the twilight came Mrs. Betts, and cut short the flight of fancy with prosy suggestions of early retirement to rest. It was easy to retire, but not so easy to sleep. Bessie's mind was astir. It became retrospective. She went over the terrors of her first coming to Caen, the dinner at Thunby's, and the weird talk of Janey Fricker in the _dortoir_, till melancholy overwhelmed her. Where was Janey? Was she still sailing with her father? No news of her had ever come to the Rue St. Jean since the day she left it. It sometimes crossed Bessie's mind that Janey was no longer in the land of the living. At last, with the lulling, soft motion of a breezeless night on the water, came oblivion and sleep too sound for dreams. CHAPTER XIV. _ON BOARD THE FOAM._ Life is continuous, so we say, but here and there events happen that mark off its parts so sharply as almost to sever them. Awaking the next morning in the tiny gilded cabin of the Foam was the signal of such an event to Bessie Fairfax. She had put away childish things, and left them behind her at Caen yesterday. To-day before her, across the Channel, was a new world to be proved, and a cloudy revelation of the joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears that nourish the imagination of blooming adolescence. For a minute she did not realize where she was, and lay still, with wide-open eyes and ears perplexed, listening to the wash of the sea. There was a splendid sunshine, a sky blue as sapphire, and a lovely green ripple of waves against the glass. The voice of Mrs. Betts brought her to herself: "I thought it best to let you sleep your sleep out, miss. The sea-air does it. The gentlemen have breakfasted two hours ago."