So with the haunts of iniquity: there were plenty to which he might take her, but very few from which she would obtain the flavor she vaguely sought. He pictured a meeting between Rhoda and Marthe Lamielle and for the first time realized to the full how far from New England he had travelled.
There were scores of questions to be asked and answered, but after a little the process became almost mechanical to Grover, and his thoughts were sinking beneath Rhoda's wavelets, trying to find the direction of his own current, for it was impossible to keep the course merely by the landmarks. Her talk of regimental balls in Cairo, Easter in Rome, tennis at Mirren was strange in the ears of a young painter aglow with hopes of a future in the company of a girl whom he was illicitly stealing away from her illicit alliance with a sculptor and whose aunt's Fathers had had no God to speak of. At any moment Rhoda might turn to him and say, with the old air of reproach, Oh, Grover, don't tell me your mind is already on the ocean with your ships again. A rush of fondness for Rhoda and all the associations she brought back with her came into his veins, and he passed her hand through his arm and folded her fingers into his as they strolled up the hill toward the Etoile.
There they found an old-fashioned victoria and drove to the Hotel du Rhin, where the Pearns greeted Grover with an affectionate stiffness that touched and charmed him, and they all sat down to a good and
