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It is six o\'clock in the evening; I am taking Rose along the boulevards, which are so interesting at this time of the year. As usual, I am astonished at everything that does not astonish her. I look at her as she walks, beautiful and impassive; I keep step with her stride; and my thoughts hover to and fro between this life of hers which refuses to take form and my ideals which are gradually fading out of existence.

Alas, the days pass over her without arousing either desire or weariness! From time to time, I suggest some simple, trifling work for her. But, whether the task be mental or material, whether the duty be light or complex, she acquiesces in the suggestion only to make it easier for her to put it aside later, gently and as a matter of course, like tired arms laying down a burden too heavy for them.

This evening, I am merciful to her indolence. Going through the hall of her boarding-house just now,
I saw the long table laid, at which the boarders meet. And I think of those destinies which have been linked with Rose\'s during the past fortnight, while I am still unable to obtain a clear idea of any one of them from her involved and incoherent accounts.

The house, which is in the old-fashioned style, has at the back a sort of glass-covered balcony overhanging the garden of the house next door. Here the boarders take their coffee after meals, while the proprietress, a gentle, amiable creature, strives to establish some sort of intimacy among them, to create an imaginary family out of these strangers who have come from all parts of the world with varying objects and for diverse reasons.

I know from experience the surprises latent in people like these. To look at them, one would set them down as belonging to stereotyped models: invalids, travellers, globe-trotters, runaways or students, as the case may be. I call up figures from my own recollection and describe them to Rose to encourage her to tell me her impressions. Stray reminiscences marshal themselves, images rise before my eyes, obliterating the things and people around me, and a vision appears over which my memory plays like a reflection in a sheet of water. I see a
long house and its white-and-green front mirrored in a clear lake. A man and a woman arrive there at the same time; and I tell Rose the story of the two old wanderers:

"It was very curious. Imagine those two people unknown to each other, leaving the same country at about the same age and making the same journeys in opposite directions. When I met them, they were two grey-haired, wizened figures, with the same short-sighted eyes blinking behind the same kind of spectacles. It amused me from the first to look at them as one and united beforehand, at a time when they were still unacquainted. I watched them at the meals which brought them closer together daily, as it were perusing each other with the pleasure of finding themselves to be alike, as though they were two copies of the same guide-book. In their equally commonplace minds, recollections took the place of ideas. To them, life was a sort of long classification; they recognised no other duty but that of taking notes and cataloguing. I don\'t know if they saw some advantage one day in uniting for good, or if they began at last to think that there are other roads to follow in the world beside those which lead to lakes, cities, waterfalls and mountains. At
any rate, after a few weeks, they were sharing the same room; and we learnt that in future they meant to live side by side."

"Had they got married?"

"No. And, though they performed a very natural action with the utmost simplicity, this was certainly not due to loftiness of soul or breadth of mind. But one felt that their knowledge of the manners and morals of other civilizations had simplified their moral outlook, just as their actual physical outlook had been dimmed through seeing nature under so many aspects."

Rose began to laugh:

"There is nothing of that kind at the boarding-house," she said. "For the moment, we have no old people: nothing but students, two American women, a Spanish lady...."

Then she hesitated a little and added:

"There\'s an artist, too, an artist who has begun to paint my portrait."

"Your portrait! And you never told me?"

I am interrupted by a violent movement from Rose. She has turned round and, in the gathering dusk, her whirling umbrella comes down furiously on a man\'s hat, smashing it in and knocking it off his
head. A gentleman is standing before us, very well-dressed and looking very uncomfortable. He stammers out a vague excuse and tries to escape, but the indignant girl addresses him noisily. An altercation follows; the loafers stop to listen; a crowd gathers round............