Page:Possession (1926).pdf/449

 Yet, as he rode over the sweltering asphalt, his eyes, his ears, his nose drank in the sights and sounds and smells. . . the sudden cry of "L'Intran! . . . L'Intran!" and "Le Petit Parisien!" the withered dying chestnut trees of the Boulevard Haussmann (he could remember when it was new), the little tables. . . Because youth was after an insidious fashion returning to him, Gramp, the bitter, the aloof, grew sentimental. It had been here, in this Paris, that he had climbed to the pinnacle of all his life, the summit from which all else had been a gentle decline. He had not died like Fergus. He had gone on and on until at last life itself had lost all its savor. . ..

They had turned now round Arc de Triomphe, and Ellen, sitting quietly by the side of Callendar, frowned. She had been silent throughout the drive, thinking, thinking, thinking bitterly with a savage secrecy because she dared not betray herself even by the flicker of an eyelid. She sat there silently, pondering how she might break the news which she herself and no other must in the end relate. It seemed to her that the whole affair was too cruel, too horrible. It was not possible that she should be forced twice to do the same terrible thing.

The sound of her mother's voice, cheerful and rich, as she talked to Lily came to her over her shoulder. . . . "And the man wouldn't open the window so in the end I opened it myself and then he began to chatter and yell at me in some ridiculous language . . . French perhaps."

"How was he dressed?" asked Lily, and Hattie described his uniform.

"Oh," replied Lily in mirth. "He was Portuguese. . . . You must never mind the Portuguese."

"Well, I don't know whether Portuguese smell worse than other nationalities but the air in that train was enough to suffocate a strong man."

. . . And now they were coming nearer and nearer to the Trocadéro. They were quite near now. Ellen turned away her eyes. They had passed the house in the Avenue Kléber. She