"For of course you must play," she had said. "You're sure to find friends there; and even if Stephen dies—which Heaven forbid!—I don't see why you shouldn't stay on for a little and enjoy yourself."
The next day the sight of Marseilles, golden in the sunshine, made her forget every trouble, past and to come. She had an impression of old houses with greeny-blue shutters, and bare plane trees, the twisted limbs of which looked white and strange in the sunlight. And beyond, the incredibly blue water. She could hardly keep her delight to herself as the train wound its leisurely way along the lovely, broken coast. She gloried in the greeny-gray of the olive trees, in the rich, red earth, in the burning blue of sea and sky.
"I should like to live here," she thought, as they passed some blue-shuttered house behind its vines and its fig trees. Or, "no, here!" as another even more alluring showed itself among its terraced olive groves. She thought, with commiseration, of her parents who might have been there too had they cared to make the effort, stuffily going their rounds— "It isn't as though they couldn't afford it," she said to herself. "I believe it's because they want to save for Gordon."
Miss McPherson, a little, calm, thin-lipped
