"Ah, Mademoiselle--De grace!"--the voice came through the open window beside her. A train full of young soldiers was beside her train, and in the window opposite hers three boys' faces crowded to look at her. Three hands held out three handkerchiefs--not very white certainly, but-Betty smiling reached out the bottle and poured lavender water on each outheld handkerchief.
"Ah, le bon souvenir!" said one.
"We shall think of the beauty of an angel of Mademoiselle every time we smell the perfume so delicious," said the second.
"And longer than that--oh, longer than that by all a life!" cried the third.
The train started. The honest, smiling boy faces disappeared. Instinctively she put her head out of the window to look back at them. All three threw kisses at her.
"I ought to be offended," said Betty, and instantly kissed her hand in return.
"How nice French people are!" she said as she sank back on the hot cushions.
And now there was leisure to think--real thoughts, not those broken, harassing dreamings that had buzzed about her between 57 Boulevard Montparnasse and the station. Also, as some one had suggested, one could cry.
She leaned back, eyes shut. Her next thought was: "I have been to sleep."
She had. The train was moving out of a station labelled Fontainebleau.
"And oh, the trees!" said Betty, "the green thick trees! And the sky. You can see the sky."
Through the carriage window she drank delight from the far grandeur of green distances, the intimate beauty of green rides, green vistas, as a thirsty carter drinks beer from the cool lip of his can--a thirsty lover madness from the warm lips of his mistress.
"Oh, how good! How green and good!" she told herself over and over again till the words made a song with the rhythm of the blundering train and the humming metals.
"Bourron!"
Her station. Little, quiet, sunlit, like the station at Long Barton; a flaming broom bush and the white of May and acacia blossom beyond prim palings; no platform--a long leap to the dusty earth. The train went on, and Betty and her boxes seemed dropped suddenly at the world's end.
The air was fresh and still. A chestnut tree reared its white blossoms like the candles on a Christmas tree for giant children. The white dust of the platform sparkled like diamond dust. May trees and laburnums shone like silver and gold. And the sun was warm and the tree-shadows black on the grass. And Betty loved it all.