On an afternoon in February, two months later, two girls were walking together in the most beautiful and perhaps the most historically romantic garden in the world, the garden of Versailles.
They had followed the long avenues known as the “Avenues of the Seasons” and in French, as Allée de l’Été, Allée de l’Automme, Allée de l’Hiver and Allée du Printemps, and were now seated on a small bench at the end of the Allée du Printemps, facing a fountain.
The fountain was not playing at the present time, and yet it must have been in action not long before. A little fringe of ice appeared at the edges of the great basin, while the clumps of reeds, from which the spray usually issued, were encrusted with tiny jewels of frost.
“Do you really prefer going home without me, Sally? I don’t feel I should allow you to go alone and yet you look tired. I suppose we should not have walked so far. I have promised to wait near the Little Trianon until Peggy and Ralph Marshall join us. This is Ralph’s first visit to Versailles and I am afraid if we are not there when he and Peggy arrive they will wait on indefinitely, expecting us to appear. You will take the tram just as I explained to you and go directly home. I should have remembered you had been ill.”
The younger of the two American girls shook her head impatiently.
“Please give up that fallacy, Bettina; I have not been ill, I have never been seriously ill in my life. I simply spent six weeks in the country to satisfy Aunt Patricia and to enjoy being as lazy as I wished. Some day perhaps I may tell you what made me unhappy after our retreat to Paris, but not now. At present I am going to desert you not so much because I am tired as because Peggy Webster and Ralph Marshall in their present engaged state bore me. Goodby, I know the way to our new home perfectly and will have no difficulty in reaching there alone. If you are late I will make your peace with Tante. It is enough that we should have one invalid in the family!”
And with a wave of her hand Sally Ashton departed, walking toward one of the nearby gates which led from the great park into the town of Versailles.
Delayed in Paris longer than she had anticipated, it was only ten days before that Miss Patricia Lord had managed to move the Camp Fire girls and Mrs. Burton from their pension in Paris to her furnished house at Versailles. But no one of them had regretted the delay, having in the interval witnessed President Wilson’s brilliant welcome by the city of Paris and the opening of the Allied Peace Conference.
Yet this afternoon, as Bettina waited in the famous garden for the coming of her friends, she was glad to have escaped from the turmoil and excitement of Paris into the comparative quiet of Versailles.
All her life, except for the few persons to whom she gave her devoted affection, Bettina had cared more for books than for human beings, which may have partly explained her lack of interest in the social life of Washington to which her parents’ positions entitled her.