They shrugged their shoulders more despairingly than ever.
II
They stood on the bridge and looked at the water and the dark masses of the houses on the Latin side, with the twin towers of Notre Dame rising dimly behind them. Ferdinand thought of the Thames at night, with the barges gliding slowly down, and the twinkling of the lights along the Embankment.
'It must be a little like that in Holland,' she said, 'but without the lights and with greater stillness.'
'When do you start?'
She had been making preparations for spending the summer in a little village near Amsterdam, to paint.
'I can't go now,' cried Valentia. 'Corrie Sayles is going home, and there's no one else I can go with. And I can't go alone. Where are you going?'
'I? I have no plans.... I never make plans.'
They paused, looking at the reflections in the water. Then she said,—