CHAPTER XIV

A SUDDEN JOURNEY

At the end of the Promenade des Anglais, on the pleasant road bordered
with tamarind-trees, stands, amid a grove of cork-oaks and eucalypti, a
charming white villa with pink shutters. A Russian lady, the Countess
Woreseff, had it built five years ago, and occupied it one winter. Then,
tired of the monotonous noise of the waves beating on the terrace and the
brightness of the calm blue sky, she longed for the mists of her native
country, and suddenly started for St. Petersburg, leaving that charming
residence to be let.

It was there, amid rhododendrons and strawberry-trees in full bloom, that
Micheline and Serge had taken up their abode. Until that day the Princess
had scarcely travelled. Her mother, always occupied in commercial
pursuits, had never left Paris. Micheline had remained with her. During
this long journey, accomplished in most luxurious style, she had behaved
like a child astonished at everything, and pleased at the least thing.
With her face close to the window she saw through the transparent
darkness of a lovely winter's night, villages and forests gliding past
like phantoms. Afar off, in the depths of the country, she caught sight
of a light glimmering, and she loved to picture a family gathered by the
fire, the children asleep and the mother working in the silence.

Children! She often thought of them, and never without a sigh of regret
rising to her lips. She had been married for some months, and her dreams
of becoming a mother had not been realized. How happy she would have been
to have a baby, with fair hair, to fondle and kiss! Then the idea of a
child reminded her of her own mother. She thought of the deep love one
must feel for a child. And the image of the mistress, sad and alone, in
the large house of the Rue Saint-Dominique, came to her mind. A vague
remorse seized her heart. She felt she had behaved badly. She said to
herself: "If, to punish me, Heaven will not grant me a child!" She wept,
and soon her grief and trouble vanished with her tears. Sleep overpowered
her, and when she awoke it was broad daylight and they were in Provence.

From that moment everything was dazzling. The arrival at Marseilles; the
journey along the coast, the approach to Nice, were all matters of
ecstacy to Micheline. But it was when the carriage, which was waiting for
them at the railway station, stopped at the gates of the villa, that she
broke into raptures. She could not feast he