railway journey and suffocated by the heat, felt inclined to cry.  This was her first step into her newly conditioned world, and her heart sank.  She regretted her comfortable rooms in Paris and the conditions of existence there of which Septimus was an integral part.  She had got used to them, to his forced association with the intimate details of her life, to his bending over the child like a grotesque fairy godfather and making astonishing suggestions for its upbringing.  She had regarded him less as a stranger to be treated with feminine reserve than the doctor.  Now it was different.  She was about to take up her own life again, with new responsibilities, and the dearly loved creature whom she had bullied and laughed at and leaned on would go away to take up his own queer way of life, and the relations between them could not possibly be the same again.  The diligence was taking her on the last stage of her journey towards the new conditions, and it jolted and bumped and smelled and took an interminable time.

“I’m sure,” said she woefully, “there’s no such place as Hottetot-sur-Mer, and we are going on forever to find it.”

Presently Septimus pointed triumphantly through the window.

“There it is!”

“Where?” cried Emmy, for not a house was in sight.  Then she saw the board.

The old diligence turned and creaked and swung and pitched down the gorge.  When they descended at the Hotel de la Plage, the setting sun blazed on their faces across the sea and shed its golden enchantment over the little pebbly beach.  At that hour the only living thing on it was the dog, and he was asleep.  It was a spot certainly to which the fashionable did not resort.

“It will be good for baby.”

“And for you.”

She shrugged her shoulders.  “What is good for one is not always—­” She paused, feeling ungrateful.  Then she added, “It’s the best place you could have brought us to.”

After dinner they sat on the beach and leaned against a fishing-boat.  It was full moon.  The northern cliff cast its huge shadow out to sea and half way across the beach.  A knot of fisher folk sat full in the moonlight on the jetty and sang a song with a mournful refrain.  Behind them in the square of yellow light of the salon window could be seen the figures of the two English maiden ladies apparently still addressing picture post-cards.  The luminous picture stood out sharp against the dark mass of the hotel.  Beyond the shadow of the cliff the sea lay like a silver mirror in the windless air.  A tiny border of surf broke on the pebbles.  Emmy drew a long breath and asked Septimus if he smelled the seaweed.  The dog came and sniffed at their boots; then from the excellent leather judging them to be persons above his social station, he turned humbly away.  Septimus called him, made friends with him—­he was a smooth yellow dog of no account—­and eventually he curled himself up between them and went to sleep.  Septimus smoked his pipe.  Emmy played with the ear of the dog and looked out to sea.  It was very peaceful.  After a while she sighed.