given up. The old stone bridge astride the canal, whose arch coupled with its own reflection in the glassy water beneath to create a perfect oval, a transparent egg through which the blue sky shone. The mountain, “Our Lady of the Snows,” whose white cone overlooked the city from the south, days away, yet in clear weather seeming close enough to reach out and touch. Countless old churches of the days of the viceroys, melon-pink in the noon sunlight, with rows of gray doves perched along their ledges. And the syrupy tolling of their bells, to tell the hour by. And the doll-like images that emerged from them on feast days to parade the streets, blue-robed and flower-crowned, borne beneath starry canopies in a galaxy of lighted candles. The orange trolley-cars with their green trailers crammed with Indians, gliding swift and bright between tall rows of eucalyptus trees, with little bleats of an electric bell at widely spaced crossings. And the rain that fell each day at just such and such an hour, blackening the glaring white of the streets and causing a perfume of crushed flowers and dead unburied things to rise in the air everywhere. All these things he knew and already loved, and felt he could not do without.
In contrast, the Northland, visioned now only as a cheerless impersonal wilderness of canyons sunk between caked masses of tall buildings, where the sun never penetrated and layer upon layer of discolored snow collected all through the winter, where the streets were given numbers and not names, was no longer seen through Sasha’s eyes, idol of her dreams. He began to fear and loathe it. And the thought of school, horrible enough in itself at any time, became all the more gruesome in this alien setting. He should have gone on attending school here, then this might never have happened. “Bluff,” that was the right word in this case. He thought regretfully of the school he had gone to in Sasha’s time—the characteristic laxity of the discipline, the smocks they wore, like girls’ dresses, the singing of the ridiculous native anthem, which sounded a good deal like a music-hall two-step, the three-hour siesta from eleven until two each day.
But the decree had gone forth and there was no escaping it. Moreover, it became increasingly apparent that Giraldy wanted to be rid of Blair. At table, for some weeks past, he had formed a habit of occasionally looking at Blair as though his presence irritated him. One night, patting his mouth gingerly with a napkin at the end of their meal, he suddenly inquired:
“What clothes have you got?”
Blair glanced down at his own form.
“Just these,” he said, “I have two other shirts in my room, and a blue tie.”
“That all you have?” Giraldy remarked with polite interest. “You’re not much for dress, are you?”
Blair smiled diffidently.
Giraldy then said, “I’ve booked you on the Spanish Mail that goes out at the end of the month. You’re going to school in France.”
Blair grew cold and a little sick.
“Not New York?”
“It’s a lot cheaper than New York. Mlle. Reynaud’s relatives can look after you when you get there.”
The relatives of a bird of paradise!
“But in New York—”
“I haven’t her address,” Giraldy said impatiently, reading his thought. “She may have left there by now.”
“But the war is over there,” exclaimed Blair aghast.
“Not in Bordeaux,” Giraldy laughed, “and anyway, that should make it all the more interesting to you. At eighteen I had already been all through the Boxer War in China and was fighting head-hunters in the Philippines.”
How explain that he did not want to spend years of his life in a strange part of the world?
“How about the blockade, can anyone get through it?”
“It’s a Spanish boat. They have safe conducts to touch at Vigo once a week. You’re showing more yellow than I thought you would. Perhaps you’d like to stay here and make lace. That girl Renée,” he said bitingly,
In contrast, the Northland, visioned now only as a cheerless impersonal wilderness of canyons sunk between caked masses of tall buildings, where the sun never penetrated and layer upon layer of discolored snow collected all through the winter, where the streets were given numbers and not names, was no longer seen through Sasha’s eyes, idol of her dreams. He began to fear and loathe it. And the thought of school, horrible enough in itself at any time, became all the more gruesome in this alien setting. He should have gone on attending school here, then this might never have happened. “Bluff,” that was the right word in this case. He thought regretfully of the school he had gone to in Sasha’s time—the characteristic laxity of the discipline, the smocks they wore, like girls’ dresses, the singing of the ridiculous native anthem, which sounded a good deal like a music-hall two-step, the three-hour siesta from eleven until two each day.
But the decree had gone forth and there was no escaping it. Moreover, it became increasingly apparent that Giraldy wanted to be rid of Blair. At table, for some weeks past, he had formed a habit of occasionally looking at Blair as though his presence irritated him. One night, patting his mouth gingerly with a napkin at the end of their meal, he suddenly inquired:
“What clothes have you got?”
Blair glanced down at his own form.
“Just these,” he said, “I have two other shirts in my room, and a blue tie.”
“That all you have?” Giraldy remarked with polite interest. “You’re not much for dress, are you?”
Blair smiled diffidently.
Giraldy then said, “I’ve booked you on the Spanish Mail that goes out at the end of the month. You’re going to school in France.”
Blair grew cold and a little sick.
“Not New York?”
“It’s a lot cheaper than New York. Mlle. Reynaud’s relatives can look after you when you get there.”
The relatives of a bird of paradise!
“But in New York—”
“I haven’t her address,” Giraldy said impatiently, reading his thought. “She may have left there by now.”
“But the war is over there,” exclaimed Blair aghast.
“Not in Bordeaux,” Giraldy laughed, “and anyway, that should make it all the more interesting to you. At eighteen I had already been all through the Boxer War in China and was fighting head-hunters in the Philippines.”
How explain that he did not want to spend years of his life in a strange part of the world?
“How about the blockade, can anyone get through it?”
“It’s a Spanish boat. They have safe conducts to touch at Vigo once a week. You’re showing more yellow than I thought you would. Perhaps you’d like to stay here and make lace. That girl Renée,” he said bitingly,
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