d they smiled and shrugged their shoulders
as they said, 'How English!'

'But, my good fellow,' cried Ferdinand, in execrable French, 'you don't
understand. We are friends, the best of friends.'

They shrugged their shoulders more despairingly than ever.

II

They stood on the bridge and looked at the water and the dark masses of
the houses on the Latin side, with the twin towers of Notre Dame rising
dimly behind them. Ferdinand thought of the Thames at night, with the
barges gliding slowly down, and the twinkling of the lights along the
Embankment.

'It must be a little like that in Holland,' she said, 'but without the
lights and with greater stillness.'

'When do you start?'

She had been making preparations for spending the summer in a little
village near Amsterdam, to paint.

'I can't go now,' cried Valentia. 'Corrie Sayles is going home, and
there's no one else I can go with. And I can't go alone. Where are you
going?'

'I? I have no plans.... I never make plans.'

They paused, looking at the reflections in the water. Then she said,--

'I don't see why you shouldn't come to Holland with me!'

He did not know what to think; he knew she had been reading the
Symposium.

'After all,' she said, 'there's no reason why one shouldn't go away with
a man as well as with a woman.'

His French friends would have suggested that there were many reasons why
one should go away with a woman rather than a man; but, like his
companion, Ferdinand looked at it in the light of pure friendship.

'When one comes to think of it, I really don't see why we shouldn't. And
the mere fact of staying at the same hotel can make no difference to
either of us. We shall both have our work--you your painting, and I my
play.'

As they considered it, the idea was distinctly pleasing; they wondered
that it had not occurred to them before. Sauntering homewards, they
discussed the details, and in half an hour had decided on the plan of
their journey, the date and the train.

Next day Valentia went to say good-bye to the old French painter whom
all the American girls called Popper. She found him in a capacious
dressing-gown, smoking cigarettes.

'Well, my dear,' he said, 'what news?'

'I'm going to Holland to paint windmills.'

'A very laudable ambition. With your mother?'

'My good Popper, my mother's in Cincinnati. I'm going with Mr White.'

'With Mr White?' He raised his eyebrows. 'You are very frank about it.'

'Why--wha