“What nonsense it all is!” she said to herself. “I used to keep the faded petals of any little flower I chanced to see in _his_ buttonhole, and put them away in envelopes marked with his initials and the date!--what a fool I was!--as great a fool as that sublime donkey, Juliette Drouet, who raved over her ‘little man’, Victor Hugo! And the silly girls who send this _edelweiss_ from Switzerland to the men they are in love with, ought just to see what those men do with it! _That_ would cure them! Like the Professor who totalled up his butcher’s bill on the back of one of Charlotte Bronté’s fervent letters, nine out of ten of them are likely to use it as a ‘wedge’ to keep a window or door from rattling!” Amused with her thoughts, she went on, reached her hotel and had luncheon, after which she paid her bill. “Madame is leaving us?” said the cheery _dame du comptoir_, speaking very voluble French. “Alas, we are sorry her stay is so short! Madame goes on to Montreux, no doubt?” “Madame” smiled at the amiable woman’s friendly inquisitiveness. “No,” she answered.--“And yet--perhaps--yes! I am taking a long holiday and hope to see all the prettiest places in Switzerland!” “Ah, there is much that is grand--beautiful!” declared the proprietress. “You will occupy much time! You will perhaps return here again?” “Oh, yes! That is very likely!” replied Diana, with a flagrant assumption of candour. “I have been very comfortable here.” “Madame is too good to say so! We are charmed! The luggage has gone to the station? Yes? That is well! _Au revoir_, Madame!” And with many gracious nods and smiles and repeated _au revoirs_, Diana escaped at last, and went towards the station, solely for the benefit of the hotel people, servants included, who stood at the doorway watching her departure. But once out of their sight she turned rapidly down a side street which she had taken note of in the morning, and soon found her way to the close little alley under trees with the steps which led to the border of the lake, but which was barred to strangers and interlopers by an iron gate through which she had already passed, and of which she had the key. There was no difficulty in unlocking it and locking it again behind her, and she drew a long breath of relief and satisfaction when she found herself once more in the grounds of the Château Fragonard. “There!” she said half aloud--“I have shut away the old world!--welcome to the new! I’m ready for anything now--life or death!--anything but the old jog-trot, loveless days of monotonous commonplace,--there will be something different here. Loveless I shall always be--but I’m beginning to think there’s another way of happiness than love!--though old Thomas à Kempis says: ‘Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller and better in Heaven and earth’; but he meant the love of God, not the love of man.”