Hayden's face
was the last thing Nancy saw as the steamer moved slowly outward.
There were hails, laughter, waving of hand-kerchiefs. He alone
looked at _her_. And so he remained in her memory, standing a little
apart from all others.
CHAPTER XV
"I, TOO, IN ARCADIA"
If Riverton was his mother's house and England his grandmother's,
France was peculiarly his own. Peter Champneys felt that he had come
home, and even the fact that he couldn't speak understandable French
didn't spoil the illusion. Nobody laughed at his barbarous jargon;
people were patient, polite, helpful. He thought the French the
pleasantest people in the world, and this opinion he never changed.
Later, when he learned to know them better, he concluded that they
were very deliberately and very gallantly gay in order to conceal
from themselves and from the world how mortally sad they were at
heart. They eschewed those virtues which made one disagreeable, and
they indulged only in such vices as really amused them, and in
consequence they made being alive a fine art.
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