“I should love to,” she replied, taking his arm.
They went along the high-road in the direction of the little town. The shutters of all the summer residences were closed; the gardens plundered. Here and there an apple, hidden among the foliage, might still be found hanging on the trees, but there wasn’t a single flower in the flower beds. The verandahs, stripped of their sunblinds, looked like skeletons; where there had been bright eyes and gay laughter, silence reigned.
“How autumnal!” she said.
“Yes, the forsaken villas look horrible.”
They walked on.
“Let us go and look at the house where we used to live.”
“Oh, yes! It will be fun.”
They passed the bathing vans.
Over there, squeezed in between the pilot’s and the gardener’s cottages, stood the little house with its red fence, its verandah and its little garden.
Memories of past days awoke. There was the bedroom where their first baby had been born. What rejoicing! What laughter! Oh! youth and gaiety! The rose-tree which they had planted was still there. And the strawberry-bed which they had made—no, it existed no longer, grass had grown over it. In the little plantation traces of the swing which they had put up were still visible, but the swing itself had disappeared.