with that great river and that twilight for a setting, breathing
that pure and fragrant air.

The Marquise had taken Saval's arm, and Yvette, Servigny's. The four
were alone by themselves. The two women seemed entirely different
persons from what they were at Paris, especially Yvette. She talked
but little, and seemed languid and grave.

Saval, hardly recognizing her in this frame of mind, asked her:
"What is the matter, Mademoiselle? I find you changed since last
week. You have become quite a serious person."

"It is the country that does that for me," she replied. "I am not
the same, I feel queer; besides I am never two days alike. To-day I
have the air of a mad woman, and to-morrow shall be as grave as an
elegy. I change with the weather, I don't know why. You see, I am
capable of anything, according to the moment. There are days when I
would like to kill people,--not animals, I would never kill
animals,--but people, yes, and other days when I weep at a mere
thing. A lot of different ideas pass through my head. It depends,
too, a good deal on how I get up. Every morning, on waking, I can
tell just what I shall be in the evening. Perhaps it is our dreams
that settle it for us, and it depends on the book I have just read."

She was clad in a white flannel suit which delicately enveloped her
in the floating softness of the material. Her bodice, with full
folds, suggested, without displaying and without restraining, her
free chest, which was firm and already ripe. And her superb neck
emerged from a froth of soft lace, bending with gentle movements,
fairer than her gown, a pilaster of flesh, bearing the heavy mass of