[Mrs. Warren—­or Madame Varennes—­whimpers a little, but soon cheers up, rings the bell for her maid preparatory to dressing and being the business woman over her preparations for departure.  She notes the address of Vivie’s hotel and promises to call for her there in the auto at three o’clock.  Vivie leaves her, descends the richly carpeted stairs—­the lift is worked by an odiously pretty, little, plump soubrette dressed as a page boy—­and goes out into the street.  Several lounging men stare hard at her, but decide she is too English, too plainly dressed, and a little too old to neddle with.  This last consideration is apparent to Vivie’s intelligence and she muses on it with a wistful little smile, half humour, half regret.  She will at her leisure write a whole description of the scene to Michael.]

Those who come after us will never realize how delightful was foreign travel before the War, before that War which installed damnable Dora in power in all the countries of Europe, especially France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and Holland.  They will not conceive it possible that the getting of a passport (as a mere means of rapidly establishing one’s identity at bank or post-office) was a simple transaction done through a banker or a tourist agency, the enclosing of stamps and the payment of a shilling or two; that there was no question of visas entailing endless humiliation and back-breaking delays, waiting about in ante-rooms and empty apartments of squalid, desolating ugliness situate always in the most odious parts of a town.  But the Foreign Offices of Europe were agreed on one topic, and this was that having got their feet back on the necks of the people, their serfs of the glebe should not, save under circumstances hateful, fatiguing, unhealthy and humiliating, travel through the lands that once were beautiful and bountiful and are so no longer.

So:  Vivie, never having consciously been abroad before (though she was later to learn she had actually been born in Brussels), began to experience all the delights of travel in a foreign land.  She woke up the next morning to the country pleasures of Villa Beau-sejour, a preposterous chateau-villa it might be, but attached to a charming Flemish farm; with cows and pigs, geese and ducks, plump poultry and white pigeons, with clumps of poplars and copses of hawthorns and wild cherry trees which joined the little domain on to the splendid forest of Tervueren.  There were the friendly, super-intelligent big dogs, like bastard St. Bernards or mastiffs in breed, that drew the little carts which carried the produce of the farm to the markets or to Brussels.  There were cheery Flemish farm servants and buxom dairy or poultry women, their wives; none of them particularly aware that there was anything discreditable about Madame Varennes.  They may have vaguely remembered she had once lived under High protection, but that, if anything, added to her prestige in their eyes.  She was an English lady who for purposes of business and may be of la haute politique chose to live in Belgium.  She was a kind mistress and a generous patronne.  Vivie as her daughter was assured of their respect, and by her polite behaviour won their liking as well.