became quite as lovely as Sir Claude had
engaged. This seemed to have put him so into the secret of things, and
the joy of the world so waylaid the steps of his friends, that little by
little the spirit of hope filled the air and finally took possession of
the scene. To drive on the long cliff was splendid, but it was perhaps
better still to creep in the shade--for the sun was strong--along the
many-coloured and many-odoured port and through the streets in which, to
English eyes, everything that was the same was a mystery and everything
that was different a joke. Best of all was to continue the creep up the
long Grand' Rue to the gate of the _haute ville_ and, passing beneath
it, mount to the quaint and crooked rampart, with its rows of trees,
its quiet corners and friendly benches where brown old women in such
white-frilled caps and such long gold earrings sat and knitted or
snoozed, its little yellow-faced houses that looked like the homes of
misers or of priests and its dark chateau where small soldiers lounged
on the bridge that stretched across an empty moat and military washing
hung from the windows of towers. This was a part of the place that could
lead Maisie to enquire if it didn't just meet one's idea of the middle
ages; and since it was rather a satisfaction than a shock to perceive,
and not for the first time, the limits in Mrs. Wix's mind of the
historic imagination, that only added one more to the variety of kinds
of insight that she felt it her own present mission to show. They sat
together on the old grey bastion; they looked down on the little new
town which seemed to them quite as old, and across at the great dome and
the high gilt Virgin of the church that, as they gathered, was famous
and that pleased them by its unlikeness to any place in which they
had worshipped. They wandered in this temple afterwards and Mrs. Wix
confessed that for herself she had probably made a fatal mistake early
in life in not being a Catholic. Her confession in its turn caused
Maisie to wonder rather interestedly what degree of lateness it was
that shut the door against an escape from such an error. They went back
to the rampart on the second morning--the spot on which they appeared
to have come furthest in the journey that was to separate them from
everything objectionable in the past: it gave them afresh the impression
that had most to do with their having worked round to a confidence that
on Maisie's part was determined a