ttered square peepholes of light,
which were windows of houses at Cap Martin--Angelo's house among others.
When with a turn of the road the bright spots vanished, Mary was
overwhelmed with homesickness, such pangs as children suffer. She did
not wish to be in the Villa Mirasole, but leaving it behind in the
darkness and travelling toward the unknown made her feel that she was
shut out in the night alone, far from Vanno, far from all that could
remind her of him.

"Remember eternal!" She thought with a superstitious pang of the tablet
and of the parted lovers.

Marie had "seen pigeons," and said that they meant sorrow and
separation. The girl had written of this to Vanno, only a few hours ago,
in a spirit of laughter, but she had been young and happy then. Now she
felt deserted and old. She was not glad to have the Dauntreys with her.
She would rather have been going alone to the Chateau Lontana. Eve's
figure sitting beside her, Lord Dauntrey's opposite, with his back to
the horses, looked black against blackness. They spoke seldom and they
were like dreams of the night, which had taken life. Mary remembered how
she had dreamed of Eve, and how glad she had been to wake. But now she
was awake and Eve was by her side. It was like a garden game the big
girls had made her play when she was the youngest child in the
convent-school. They had wound long, thick strings round her waist and
ankles; then they had made her run, and when she had gone a certain
distance they drew her back, slowly and firmly, or with violence,
according to their mood. This had been a torture to the imaginative
little girl, and Sister Marie-des-Anges, seeing it one day, ordered the
older children to stop, and the game had been forbidden. This benevolent
edict had given Mary a warm sense of being protected; but there was no
one to protect her now.

If the girl had been happy, she could have laughed at these memories,
coming up in connection with the two silent, dark figures of the man and
woman she was to shelter in her house; but in her perplexity their
presence made the desolation of the night more desolate.

Mentone streets were empty and the shops shut: only hotel and villa
windows were bright. The carriage passed through the town, and beyond
the last houses of Garavan the night was blacker than before.

They came to the Italian frontier, broken off from the rich slopes of
France by the deep Gorge of St. Louis, resonant with singing water. Mary