"You will meet that crisis
if it comes and I have no fear, Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, as to how the battle
will go."
He was glad that he did not have to face her eyes just then. "We will go
abroad next Wednesday week," he whispered, "and we'll be happy in
France--in Switzerland--in Holland--I want to see the park at the Hague
again; and the tall trees with their straight big trunks green with moss;
and the boughs meeting over the canals and making the clear water so black;
and the snow-white swans sailing statelily about."
* * * * *
With the Atlantic between him and his work, he was able to suspend the
habit of so many years. You would have fancied them just married, at
whatever stage of their wanderings you might have met them. They were
always laughing and talking--an endless flow of high spirits, absorption
each in the other. They rose when they pleased, went to bed when it suited
them. They had a manservant and a maid with them to relieve them of all the
details. They travelled only in the afternoons, and then not far. If they
missed one train, they cheerfully waited for another.
"I think we are achieving my ideal of vacation," he said.
"What is that--perfect idleness? We certainly are idle. I shouldn't have
believed you could be so idle.
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