"No, I did say the Park, and we will go there. But let us walk near the edge, not too far away from this marvellous city. Never was there a city like New York for life. I'm sure of that. It's as if every living creature had quicksilver in his veins--or her veins. For I never saw such vital women as one sees here anywhere else! Oh, Claude! When you conquer these wonderful women!" Her vivacity and excitement were almost unnatural. "New York intoxicates me to-day!" she exclaimed. "How are you going to do without it?" "When we go?" "Yes, when we go home?" "Home? But where is our home?" "In Kensington Square, I suppose." "I don't feel as if we should ever be able to settle down there again. That little house saw our little beginnings, when we didn't know what we really meant to do." "Djenan-el-Maqui then?" "Ah!" she said, with a changed voice. "Djenan-el-Maqui! What I have felt there! More than I ever can tell you, Claudie." She began to desire the comparative quiet of the Park, and was glad that just then they passed the Plaza Hotel and went toward it. "I wonder how Enid Mardon is feeling," she said, looking up at the ranges of windows. "Which is the tenth floor where she is?" "Don't ask me to count to-day. I would rather play with the squirrels." They were among the trees now and walked on briskly. Both of them needed movement and action, something to "take them out of themselves." A gray squirrel ran down from its tree with a waving tail and crossed just in front of them slowly. Charmian followed it with her eyes. It had an air of cheerful detachment, of self-possession, almost of importance, as if it were fully conscious of its own value in the scheme of the universe, whatever others might think. "How contented that little beast looks," said Claude. "But it can never be really happy, as you and I could be, as we are going to be." "No, perhaps not. But there's the other side." He quoted Dante: "_Quanto la cosa e piu perfetta, piu senta il bene, e cosi la doglienza._" "I don't wish to prove that I'm high up in the scale by suffering," she said. "Do you?" "Ought not the artist to be ready for every experience?" he answered. And she thought she detected in his voice a creeping of irony. "We are getting near to the theater," she said presently, when they had walked for a time in silence. "Let us keep in the Park till we are close to it, and then just stand and look at it for a moment from the opposite side of the way." "Yes," he said.