Mr. and Mrs. Rutherford were to winter in Rome, but there was the autumn still to be disposed of. Neither of them wanted Marienbad. They knew the place inside out, and hated it; and after wasting half an hour at the breakfast-table turning over a Continental Bradshaw, they had only arrived more certainly at the conviction that they were tired of everywhere.
The whole system of continental travelling was weariness and monotony: the race to Dover through the freshness of morning, the race across sunlit waves to Calais, the hurried luncheon in the station, and the three hours' run to Paris, the huge Gare du Nord, with its turmoil of blue blouses and loaded barrows; the long drive to the hotel, and the early start in the Rapide for the South: or the Engadine express, with the night journey through pine woods, and the rather weary awakening at Lucerne, and then on to Locarno and the great lake. It had been delicious while it was new, and while it was new for these two to be together, wedded and inseparable for evermore. But all the tracks that had been new were old now; and though they were lovers still, something had come between them that darkened love.
"Tyrol, Engadine, Courmayeur? No," said Vera, throwing Bradshaw aside. "No, no, no. The hotels are all alike, and they make the scenery seem the same. If one could be adventurous, if one could stop at strange inns, where one need never hear an English voice, it would be better. But it is always the same hotel, the same rooms, and the same waiters, and the same food."
"A little better or a little worse; generally worse," assented Claude.
"I have had a letter from Aunt Mildred this morning. She wants us to spend August at Disbrowe."
"Would you like it?" he asked.
"Like it?" she echoed, with her eyes clouding, and a catch in her voice; and then she started up from her seat and came to her husband, and put her hand upon his shoulder.
"I think we have been getting rather modern of late, Claude," she said in a low voice, "rather semi-detached. Disbrowe would bring us nearer together again. We should remember the old days."
"Disbrowe, by all means, then," he answered gaily.
"We must never drift apart, Claude," she went on earnestly, with something of tragedy in her voice, which trembled a little as she crept closer to him. "Remember, we have nothing but our love, nothing else between us and despair."