Many women are shepherded through all life’s journeyings by their men—fathers, brothers, husbands—who look out their trains for them, put them in the care of guards, and shield them from all contact with sulky porters and extortionate cabmen. Olive, who had always to take her own ticket and fight her own and her mother’s battles, now tasted the joys of irresponsibility with Avenel. He compounded with Customs officials, who bowed low before him, he took part in the midnight scramble for pillows at Modane, emerging from the crowd in triumph with no less than three of the coveted aids to repose under his arm, and he saw Olive comfortably settled in another compartment with two motherly German women, and there left her.
At Turin he secured places in the diretto to Florence, and sent his man to the buffet for coffee and rolls, and the two broke their fast together.
“Italy and the joy of life,” Olive said lightly, as she lifted her cup, and he looked at her with melancholy brown eyes that yet held the ghost of a smile.
“The passing hour,” he answered; adding prosaically, “This is good coffee.”
Referring to the grey silvery trees whose name she bore he assured her that he did not think she resembled them. “They are old and you seem eternally young. You should have been called Primavera.”
She laughed. “Ah, if you had been my godfather—”
“I should not have cared to have held you in my arms when you were a bald-headed baby,” he answered with perfect gravity.
Apparently he always said what he thought, but his frankness was disconcerting, and Olive changed the subject.
“Is Siena beautiful?”
“It is a gem of the Renaissance, and you will love it as I do, I know, but I wish you could have seen Florence first. My brother has a villa at Settignano and I am going there now. The fruit trees in the orchard will be all white with blossom. You remember Romeo’s April oath: ‘By yonder moon that tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops—’”