e dared not look
back at the white cliffs, but kept her eyes resolutely seaward. The
wind was high, and she heard that the crossing would be rough. Caesar
was close behind her, and she caught a glimpse of him going aft as she
made her way to the ladies' cabin.

She lay down on one of the red velvet divans in the stuffy saloon, and
closed her eyes as she had been advised to do, and in ten minutes her
misery was complete.

"If you are going to be ill nothing will stop you," observed the
sympathetic stewardess. "It is like Monte Carlo. Most people have a
system, and sometimes they win, but they are bound to lose in the end.
Champagne, munching biscuits, patent medicines, lying down as you are
now. It is all vanity and vexation of spirit, my dear."

Olive joined feebly in her laugh. "I feel better now. Are we nearly
there?"

"Just coming into harbour."

"Thank heaven!"

When Olive crawled up on deck her one idea, after her luggage, was to
avoid anyone who had seemed to admire her. She could not bear that the
man should see her green face, and she was grateful to him for keeping
his distance in the crush to get off the boat, and for disappearing
altogether in the station. A porter in a blue linen blouse piloted her
to the waiting train, and she climbed into the compartment labelled
"Turin," and settled herself in a window seat.

The country between Calais and Paris can only be described as flat,
stale and unprofitable by a beauty lover panting for the light and
glow and colour of the South, and Olive soon got a book out of her bag
and began to read. Her only fellow-passenger, a middle-aged English
lady with an indefinite face, spoke to her presently. "You are reading
a French novel?"

"No, it is in Italian. _La Citta Morta_, by Gabriele D'Annunzio. I
want to rub up my few words of the language."

"Is he not a very terrible writer?"

Olive was so tired of the disapproving note. "He writes very well, and
his descriptions are gorgeous. Of course he is horrid sometimes, but
one can skip those parts."

"Do you?"

Olive smiled. "No, I do not," she said frankly, "but I don't enjoy
them. They make me tired of life."

"Is not that rather a pity?"

"Perhaps; but you have to sift dirt to find diamonds, don't you? And
this man says things that are worth tiaras sometimes."

"Surely there must be Italian authors who write books suitable for
young people in a pretty style?"

"A pretty style? No doubt. But I don't rea