mute. At
other times she behaved with such exquisite docility and sweetness that
Widdowson was beside himself with rapture.

After a week of convalescence, she said one morning,--

'Couldn't we go away somewhere? I don't think I shall ever be quite
well staying here.'

'It's wretched weather,' replied her husband.

'Oh, but there are places where it wouldn't be like this. You don't
mind the expense, do you, Edmund?'

'Expense? Not I, indeed! But--were you thinking of abroad?'

She looked at him with eyes that had suddenly brightened.

'Oh! would it be possible? People do go out of England in the winter.'

Widdowson plucked at his grizzled beard and fingered his watch-chain.
It was a temptation. Why not take her away to some place where only
foreigners and strangers would be about them? Yet the enterprise
alarmed him.

'I have never been out of England,' he said, with misgiving.

'All the more reason why we should go. I think Miss Barfoot could
advise us about it. She has been abroad, I know, and she has so many
friends.'

'I don't see any need to consult Miss Barfoot,' he replied stiffly. 'I
am not such a helpless man, Monica.'

Yet a feeling of inability to grapple with such an undertaking as this
grew on him the more he thought of it. Naturally, his mind busied
itself with such vague knowledge as he had gathered of those places in
the South of France, where rich English people go to escape their own
climate: Nice, Cannes. He could not imagine himself setting forth to
these regions. Doubtless it was possible to travel thither, and live
there when one arrived, without a knowledge of French; but he pictured
all sorts of humiliating situations resulting from his ignorance. Above
everything he dreaded humiliation in Monica's sight; it would be
intolerable to have her comparing him with men who spoke foreign
languages, and were at home on the Continent.

Nevertheless, he wrote to his friend Newdick, and invited him to dine,
solely for the purpose of talking over this question with him in
private. After dinner he broached the subject. To his surprise, Newdick
had ideas concerning Nice and Cannes and such places. He had heard
about them from the junior partner of his firm, a young gentleman who
talked largely of his experiences abroad.

'An immoral lot there,' he said, smiling and shaking his head. 'Queer
goings on.'

'Oh, but that's among the foreigners, isn't it?'

Thereupon Mr. Newdick revealed his ac