't. Do you think it so much better to have the courage of your
convictions?"

"I don't know. It seems to me that I'm less and less certain of
everything that I used to be sure of."

He laughed, and then he said, "I was thinking how, on our wedding
journey, long ago, that Gray Sister at the Hotel Dieu in Quebec offered
you a rose."

"Well?"

"That was to your pretty youth. Now the gracious stranger gives you a
folding stool."

"To rest my poor old feet. Well, I would rather have it than a rose,
now."

"You bent toward her at just the slant you had when you took the flower
that time; I noticed it. I didn't see that you looked so very different.
To be sure the roses in your cheeks have turned into rosettes; but
rosettes are very nice, and they're much more permanent; I prefer them;
they will keep in any climate."

She suffered his mockery with an appreciative sigh. "Yes, our age
caricatures our youth, doesn't it?"

"I don't think it gets much fun out of it," he assented.

"No; but it can't help it. I used to rebel against it when it first
began. I did enjoy being young."

"You did, my dear," he said, taking her hand tenderly; she withdrew it,
because though she could bear his sympathy, her New England nature could
not bear its expression. "And so did I; and we were both young a long
time. Travelling brings the past back, don't you think? There at that
restaurant, where we stopped for dinner--"

"Yes, it was charming! Just as it used to be! With that white cloth, and
those tall shining bottles of wine, and the fruit in the centre, and the
dinner in courses, and that young waiter who spoke English, and was so
nice! I'm never going home; you may, if you like."

"You bragged to those ladies about our dining-cars; and you said that
our railroad restaurants were quite as good as the European."

"I had to do that. But I knew better; they don't begin to be."

"Perhaps not; but I've been thinking that travel is a good deal alike
everywhere. It's the expression of the common civilization of the world.
When I came out of that restaurant and ran the train down, and then
found that it didn't start for fifteen minutes, I wasn't sure whether
I was at home or abroad. And when we changed cars at Eger, and got into
this train which had been baking in the sun for us outside the station,
I didn't know but I was back in the good old Fitchburg depot. To be
sure, Wallenstein wasn't assassinated at Boston, but I forgot his murde