steamers or trains
and in hotels he had that kind of confidence in himself which, failing
him somewhat whenever he entered the precincts of domestic life, was
sure to desert him altogether now, as he approached the strange and
imposing.

"Madame est a la campagne."

A black-eyed old woman had told him so on the previous day. For the
instant he was relieved, since it put off the moment of confronting the
great lady a little longer.

He had, in fact, rung the bell at the frowning portal in the rue de
l'Universite with some trepidation. Suggestions of grandeur and mystery
beyond anything he was prepared to meet lay within these seemingly
fortified walls. At the same time it gave glory to the glamour in which
the image of Olivia Guion always appeared to him to think she had
passed and repassed these solemn gates at will, and that the stately
Louis Quinze _hotel_, of which the concierge allowed him a glimpse
across the courtyard, had, on and off, been her home for years. It was
one more detail that removed her beyond his sphere and made her
inaccessible to his yearnings.

From the obliging post-office clerk at the bank on which he drew--a
gentleman posted in the movements of all distinguished Americans on the
continent of Europe--he learned that "la campagne" for the Marquise de
Melcourt meant the chateau of Melcourt-le-Danois in the neighborhood of
Harfleur. He was informed, moreover, that by taking the two-o'clock
train to Havre he could sleep that night at the Hotel Frascati, and
motor out to Melcourt easily within an hour in the morning. It began
then to occur to him that what had presented itself at first as a
prosaic journey from Boston to Paris and back was becoming an adventure,
with a background of castles and noble dames.

Nevertheless, he took heart for the run to Havre, and except for feeling
at twilight the wistfulness that comes out of the Norman landscape--the
melancholy of things forgotten but not gone, dead but still brooding
wraith-like over the valley of the Seine, haunting the hoary churches,
and the turreted chateaux, and the windings of the river, and the long
lines of poplar, and the villages and forests and orchards and
corn-fields--except for this, his spirits were good. If now and then he
was appalled at what he, a shy fellow with no antecedents to recommend
him and no persuasive powers, had undertaken, he thought of Olivia
Guion. The thing he was attempting became trivial when compared with