"Every time I take a train out of Paris," Gideon mused, "I wonder if the landscape is really this ugly, or does it just look that way after you've had your eyes dazzled by Paris itself?"

"It has to be the former," Julie said. "We didn't see enough of Paris to get dazzled."

"That's a good point," Gideon said, nodding.

"And what we did see wasn't that dazzling."

"Very true."

They had begun the fourteen-hour, eight time-zone flight from Seattle early the day before, arriving jet-lagged and seedy at 6:15 this morning, showered and changed at the airport, taken the Air France bus to the city, had a disappointingly so-so breakfast in a glassed-in streetside brasserie, managed to get in a morning walk around the Tuileries and then caught a taxi to the train station, where a two-day old garbage men's strike had left the place looking as if it had been hit by a tornado. All in all, not a wildly successful Paris visit, and their moods reflected it.

After an hour or so on the rails, however, during much of which Julie slept, the land developed some character, the fields becoming more contoured, the villages a little prettier and more individual; about on a par, say, with what you'd see driving through southern New Jersey. But then, as the train moved deeper into the rural heart of France, eventually crossing into the departement of the Dordogne-or the Perigord, as most Frenchmen still referred to it-there were increasingly frequent glimpses of deep-green forests of chestnut and oak, smooth-flowing rivers, and wonderful outcroppings of limestone, brilliant against the darkness of the green.

Gideon too tried sleeping, but, although he was relaxed and comfortable enough, it came only in drifting patches, and most of the time he simply looked dumbly and contentedly at the scenes sliding by the window, or equally dumbly and contentedly at Julie, sound asleep in the chair opposite in their otherwise empty compartment, a single misplaced tendril of her glossy, curly, black hair quivering back and forth on her cheek with every quiet breath.