Jeanne said:

"How I should like to travel!"

"Yes, but it would be rather dull traveling alone," said the vicomte.
"You want a companion to whom you could confide your impressions."

"That is true," she answered thoughtfully; "still, I like to go for long
walks alone. When there is no one with me I build such castles in the
air."

"But two people can better still plan out a happy future," he said,
looking her full in the face.

Her eyes fell; did he mean anything? She gazed at the horizon as though
she would look beyond it; then she said slowly:

"I should like to go to Italy--and to Greece--and to Corsica, it must
be so wild and so beautiful there."

He preferred the chalets and lakes of Switzerland.

She said: "No, I should like to go either to a country with little or no
history like Corsica, or else to one with very old associations like
Greece. It must be so interesting to find the traces of those nations
whose history one has known from childhood, and to see the places where
such great and noble deeds were done."

"Well, for my part, I should like to go to England; it is such an
instructive country," said the vicomte, who was more practical than
Jeanne.

Then they discussed the beauties of every country from the poles to the
equator, and went into raptures over the unconventional customs of such
nations as the Chinese or the Laplanders; but they came to the
conclusion that the most beautiful land in the world is France, with her
temperate climate--cool in summer and warm in winter--her fertile
fields, her green forests, her great, calm rivers, and her culture in
the fine arts which has existed nowhere else since the palmy days of
Athens.

Silence again fell over the little party. The blood-red sun was sinking,
and a broad pathway of light lay in the wake of the boat leading right
up to the dazzling globe. The wind died out, there was not a ripple on
the water, and the motionless sail was reddened by the rays of the
setting sun. The air seemed to possess some soothing influence which
silenced everything around this meeting of the elements. The sea, like
some huge bird, awaited the fiery lover who was approaching her shining,
liquid bosom, and the sun hastened his descent, empurpled by the desire
of their embrace. At length he joined her, and gradually disappeared.
Then a freshness came from the horizon, and a breath of air rippled the
surface of the water as if the vanished sun had given a sigh of