Yes, Paris lay far behind her, very far. She was in Austria, beautiful, dreamingly-drowsy Austria, and, in spite of the reluctance with which she returned to her fatherland, it affected her.
A low blue chain of hills lay on the western horizon like a vanishing storm-cloud. The landscape around was level and extended. Large, quiet pools, surrounded by tall rushes, and covered with a network of fragrant waterlilies, gleamed here and there among the emerald meadows.
The sun was near its setting. The shadows of the telegraph poles stretched out indefinitely. Little towns contentedly sleeping away their dull lives among green lindens, showed their old-fashioned silhouettes, black against the sunlit evening clouds.
Truyn laid aside his newspaper, and his face grew eager and animated, every knotted gnarled willow, every half-ruinous garden wall here interested him.
A forest of firs, their trunks glowing red in the last rays of the sun, bordered the railway. "There, just by that stunted fir, I shot my first deer," Truyn exclaimed, and in his eyes sparkled the memory of a happy boyhood; then, drawing Zinka to him, he whispered tenderly: "You are at home, Zini; we are travelling upon our own soil."
"Ah," replied Zinka, nestling close to him, timid as a child afraid of ghosts.
"How nervous you are!" he said, gently stroking her cheek--"you silly little goose you!"
"It is not for myself," she whispered, "so long as you love me, you and Ella, I can bear anything. But I know you--it would grieve you to the very heart, if ...."
"Tickets, if you please!"
A breathless panting--a shrill whistle.