ling in love. She fell in love just so last
year at a ball with a little youth who was very dandified, but without
fortune. This time, luckily, yes--Edward told me so--there is plenty of
money; so, naturally, if Martha is willing we are."

The train ran on, and on, and on; and Raoul talked, and talked, and
talked. He even let slip practical thoughts, raised himself up to
general ideas, and developed with force the theory that the first duty
of a woman was to be, in all things, refined elegance. He explained,
with endless detail, what the life of an absolutely correct fashionable
woman was, what it was to be an absolutely fashionable woman. He
triumphantly took _his fashionable woman_ from Paris to Trouville, from
Trouville to Lake Como, from Lake Como to Monte-Carlo. He drew the
trunks of the fashionable woman, marvellous trunks, which were heaped up
in the vestibules of first-class hotels. Besides, he had also invented a
trunk.

Then, very tactfully, he put Martha through a little examination, which
had nothing in common with the examinations of the Sorbonne or the Hotel
de Ville.

"Did she skate?" That's what he wanted to know first! He was himself a
very distinguished skater. He needed a sport-loving wife. He had but
just pronounced the word skating when suddenly the young brother (how
precious little brothers sometimes are) exclaimed: "Ah, it's sister who
skates well! She makes figures-of-eight. And who swims well, too--like a
fish!"

She skated, she swam, she was sport-loving. Raoul said to the young
girl, with deep enthusiasm: "I congratulate you. A woman who can't swim
isn't a woman."

And he added, with increasing energy:

"A woman who can't skate isn't a woman."

When he had a strong thought, he willingly used it again in a brief but
striking form.

Martha's face beamed with joy. She was really a woman. Never had a
sweeter word been said to her.

Night had come; it was necessary, therefore, to tear one's self away
from that exquisite conversation, and return to the parlor-car. Young
Derame was going to sleep; so they began to prepare for the trip through
the train.

Here is the platform, the platform of the morning, the platform of the
first meeting. She walks ahead of him, and in a whisper he says to her,
"It's here that this morning--"

She turns round, and smiling repeats, "Yes, it's here that this
morning--"

Always with that little English accent which never leaves her, even when
she is m