gether and some churches, and then Alice and her mother began the real business of Paris, which is shopping and having dresses made, and Edward began the picture which he intended to send to the Salon in the spring.
He had been thinking about this picture for a long time. Sometimes it was going to be a landscape and sometimes it was going to be three nymphs dancing. Then it became a nocturne—one of the bridges across the Seine at night. Then it became the same bridge only from a different angle; the night ceased to be clear and became foggy, with stars showing where the fog was thin, and when he had made a lot of sketches and experimental star and fog effects, the angle of the bridge had to be changed once more and he decided to introduce the dancing nymphs into the foreground.
At this point the Ruggles departed for Italy. Edward saw them off in the rain. He promised to join them in Corsica in the early spring. But there was only one thing certain. If there had ever been anything between himself and Alice it was over. During all their meetings she had held him at arm's length. Sometimes it seemed as if she had a kind of maternal tenderness and pity for him. But more often it seemed as if she had no sentiment for him at all.
