It was the middle of July, and watering places not very full as yet,
nor were there many people staying at the Ocean Hotel where he
stopped. Two Americans, who had begun a summer tour on the Continent
by a short stay at Ostend, made friends with him on the first day
after his arrival, when they found he could speak English. They
invited him to join them on their walks, and made him give them
information about Germany, and especially about Berlin, which they
intended visiting; in return they told him all about the north coast
of France, with its watering-places, big and little, which they had
"done" last year from Cherbourg to Dunkirk.
Strolling the next afternoon with his new acquaintances along the
Digue, a few steps in front of them he saw a lady, plainly and
darkly but most elegantly dressed leaning on the arm of a tall man.
They walked slowly, and were evidently lost in contemplation of the
softly rolling sea. At first he paid but little attention to the
couple, and would not have noticed them at all had not the Digue
been very empty of visitors just then. But, strange to say, his gaze
kept wandering from the oily surface of the sea, and the steamers
and fishing-smacks plowing their way through it, to the slender
figure of the lady, who looked small beside her tall companion; and
there gradually dawned upon him a dim idea that that slight figure
reminded him of somebody--that he had seen those delicate contours,
those graceful proportions, that light and gliding gait before.
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