Page:Magician 1908.djvu/70

 suspicion of the malice of circumstances. But he shook himself and straightened his back.

“It’s stupid to be so morbid as that,” he muttered.

Margaret laughed. They walked out of the gallery and turned to the quay. By crossing the bridge and following the river, they must come eventually to Dr. Porhoët’s house.

Meanwhile Susie wandered down the Boulevard Saint Michel, alert with the Sunday crowd, to that part of Paris which was dearest to her heart. L’Île Saint Louis to her mind offered a synthesis of the French spirit, and it pleased her far more than the garish boulevards in which the English as a rule seek for the country’s fascination. Its position on an island in the Seine gave it a compact charm. The narrow streets, with their array of dainty comestibles, had the look of streets in a provincial town. They had a quaintness which appealed to the fancy and they were very restful. The names of the streets recalled the monarchy that passed away in bloodshed, and in poudre de riz. The very plane-trees had a greater sobriety than elsewhere, as though conscious they stood in a Paris where progress was not. In front was the turbid Seine, and below, the twin lovers of Notre-Dame. Susie could have kissed the hard paving stones of the quay. Her good-natured, plain face lit up as she realised the delight of the scene upon which her eyes rested; and it was with a little pang, her mind aglow with characters and events from history, and from fiction, that she turned away to enter Dr. Porhoët’s house.