swindle 'im, and he believing himself always such a sharp man of
business! When that Vaughan hussy..."

_Vivie_: "Very well. We'll go to Villa Beau-sejour. But don't give
me too many of your reminiscences or I may leave you after all and
go back to England. Whilst I'm with you, you must give up rouge and
patchouli and the kind of conversation that goes with them. I'm out
here trying to do my duty and duty is always unpleasant. I don't
want to be a kill-joy, but don't give me more of that side of your
character than you can help. It--it makes me sick, mother..."

[Mrs. Warren--or Madame Varennes--whimpers a little, but soon cheers
up, rings the bell for her maid preparatory to dressing and being
the business woman over her preparations for departure. She notes
the address of Vivie's hotel and promises to call for her there in
the _auto_ at three o'clock. Vivie leaves her, descends the richly
carpeted stairs--the lift is worked by an odiously pretty, little,
plump soubrette dressed as a page boy--and goes out into the street.
Several lounging men stare hard at her, but decide she is too
English, too plainly dressed, and a little too old to neddle with.
This last consideration is apparent to Vivie's intelligence and she
muses on it with a wistful little smile, half humour, half regret.
She will at her leisure write a whole description of the scene to
Michael.]

Those who come after us will never realize how delightful was
foreign travel before the War, before that War which installed
damnable Dora in power in all the countries of Europe, especially
France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and Holland. They will not
conceive it possible that the getting of a passport (as a mere means
of rapidly establishing one's identity at bank or post-office) was a
simple transaction done through a banker or a tourist agency, the
enclosing of stamps and the payment of a shilling or two; that there
was no question of _visas_ entailing endless humiliation and
back-breaking delays, waiting about in ante-rooms and empty
apartments of squalid, desolating ugliness situate always in the
most odious parts of a town. But the Foreign Offices of Europe were
agreed on one topic, and this was that having got their feet back on
the necks of the people, their serfs of the glebe should not, save
under circumstances hateful, fatiguing, unhealthy and humiliating,
travel through the lands that once were beautiful and bountiful and
are so no longer.

So: