r good-natured rotundity, who had
welcomed me any time and anywhere; and Madeleine Chaine; and slender
Antonia above all, with the Italian woman's ardent and theatrical face,
ebony-framed, and wearing a hat of Parisian splendor. For Antonia is
very elegant since she married Veron. I could not help wincing when I
saw that lanky woman, who had clung to me in venturesome rooms, now
assiduous around us in her ceremonious attire. But how far off and
obliterated all that was!

CHAPTER V

DAY BY DAY

We rearranged the house. We did not alter the general arrangement, nor
the places of the heavy furniture--that would have been too great a
change. But we cast out all the dusty old stuff, the fossilized and
worthless knick-knacks that Mame had accumulated. The photographs on
the walls, which were dying of jaundice and debility, and which no
longer stood for anybody, because of the greatness of time, we cleared
out of their imitation tortoiseshell and buried in the depths of
drawers.

I bought some furniture, and as we sniffed the odor of varnish which
hung about for a long time in the lower room, we said, "This is the
real thing." And, indeed, our home was pretty much like the
middle-class establishments of our quarter and everywhere. Is it not
the only really proud moment here on earth, when we can say, "I, too!"

Years went by. There was nothing remarkable in our life. When I came
home in the evening, Marie, who often had not been out and had kept on
her dressing-gown and plaits, used to say, "There's been nothing to
speak of to-day."

The aeroplanes were appearing at that time. We talked about them, and
saw photographs of them in the papers. One Sunday we saw one from our
window. We had heard the chopped-up noise of its engine expanding over
the sky; and down below, the townsfolk on their doorsteps, raised their
heads towards the ceiling of their streets. Rattling space was marked
with a dot. We kept our eyes on it and saw the great flat and noisy
insect grow bigger and bigger, silhouetting the black of its angles and
partitioned lines against the airy wadding of the clouds. When its
headlong flight had passed, when it had dwindled in our eyes and ears
amid the new world of sounds, which it drew in its train, Marie sighed
dreamily.

"I would like," she said, "to go up in an aeroplane, into the
wind--into the sky!"

One spring we talked a lot about a trip we would take some day. Some
railway