omparative sense of safety came to
them. It was Durkin's suggestion that it might not be amiss for them
to give the impression of being a newly-married couple, on their
honeymoon journey; and, to this end, he had half-filled the compartment
with daffodils and jonquils, with carnations and violets and roses,
purchased with one turn of the hand from a midnight flower-vender, on
his way down from the hills for any early morning traffic that might
offer.

So as they sped toward the Italian frontier, in the white and mellow
Mediterranean moonlight, threading their way between the tranquil
violet sea bejeweled with guardian lights and the steep and silent
slopes of the huddled mountains, they lounged back on their hired
train-pillows, self-immured, and unperturbed, and quietly contented
with themselves and their surroundings. At least, so it seemed to the
eyes of each scrutinizing guard and official, who, after one sharp
glance at the flower-filled compartment and the crooning young English
lovers, passed on with a laugh and a shrug or two.

Yet, at heart, Durkin and Frank were anything but happy. As they sped
on, and his wife pointed out to him that the selfsame road they were
taking between confining rock and sea was the same narrow passage, so
time-worn and war-scarred, once taken by Greeks and Ligurians, Romans
and Saracens, it seemed to Durkin that his first fine estimate of the
life of war and adventure had been a false one. His old besetting
doubts and scruples began to awake. It was true that the life they had
plunged into would have its dash and whirl. But it would be the dash
of a moment, and the whirl of a second. Then, as it always must be,
there would come the long interval of flight and concealment, the
wearying stretch of inactivity. He felt, as he gazed out the car
window and saw town and village and hamlet left behind them, that the
same wave of excitement that cast him up would forever in turn drag him
down--and it all resulted, he told himself, in his passing distemper of
fatigue and anxiety, in a little further abrasion, in a little sterner
denudation of their tortured souls!

It was at Ventimiglia that the _capostazione_ himself appeared at the
door of their compartment, accompanied by a uniformed official. The
two fugitives, with their hearts in their mouths, leaned back on their
cushions with assumed unconcern, cooing and chattering hand in hand
among their flowers, while a volley of quick a