ose
whose season was advancing, gazed with interest towards the door,
whenever it opened, with a desire to see new faces appearing.

This is the principal distraction of health-resorts. People look
forward to the dinner-hour in order to inspect each day's new
arrivals, to find out who they are, what they do, and what they think.
A vague longing springs up in the mind, a longing for agreeable
meetings, for pleasant acquaintances, perhaps for love-adventures. In
this life of elbowings, not only those with whom we have come into
daily contact, but strangers, assume an extreme importance. Curiosity
is aroused, sympathy is ready to exhibit itself, and sociability is
the order of the day.

We cherish antipathies for a week and friendships for a month; we see
other people with different eyes when we view them through the medium
of the acquaintanceship that is brought about at health-resorts. We
discover in men suddenly, after an hour's chat, in the evening after
dinner, under the trees in the park where the generous spring bubbles
up, a high intelligence and astonishing merits, and a month
afterwards, we have completely forgotten these new friends, so
fascinating when we first met them.

There also are formed lasting and serious ties more quickly than
anywhere else. People see each other every day; they become acquainted
very quickly; and with the affection thus originated is mingled
something of the sweetness and self-abandonment of long-standing
intimacies. We cherish in after years the dear and tender memories of
those first hours of friendship, the memory of those first
conversations through which we have been able to unveil a soul, of
those first glances which interrogate and respond to the questions and
secret thoughts which the mouth has not as yet uttered, the memory of
that first cordial confidence, the memory of that delightful sensation
of opening our hearts to those who are willing to open theirs to us.

And the melancholy of health-resorts, the monotony of days that are
all alike, help from hour to hour in this rapid development of
affection.

* * * * *

Well, this evening, as on every other evening, we awaited the
appearance of strange faces.

Only two appeared, but very remarkable-looking, a man and a
woman--father and daughter. They immediately produced the same effect
on my mind as some of Edgar Poe's characters; and yet there was about
them a charm, the charm associate