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started walking toward the exit. The whole failing enterprise was as elegiac as a summer resort out of season. They looked around one last time for the little French boy but he had vanished. As they passed the gypsy fortuneteller’s tent, Harold felt a slight pressure on his coat sleeve. “All right,” he said. “If you want to.”
    â€œJust this once,” she said apologetically.
    He disliked having his fortune told.
    The gypsy fortuneteller sat darning her stocking by the light of a kerosene lamp. It turned out that she had lived in Chicago and spoke English. She asked Barbara for the date of her birth and then, nodding, said “Virgo.” She looked inquiringly at Harold. “Scorpio,” he said.
    The gypsy fortuneteller looked in her crystal ball and saw that he was lying. He was Leo. Raising her eyes, she saw that he had kept his hands in his pockets.
    She passed her thin brown hand over the crystal ball twice and saw that there was a shadow across their lives but it was not permanent, like the shadows she was used to finding. No blackened chimneys, no years and years of wandering, no loved one vanished forever into a barbed-wire enclosure, no savings stolen, no letters returned unopened and stamped
Whereabouts Unknown
.Whatever the trouble was, in five or six years it would clear up.
    She took Barbara Rhodes’s hand and opened the fingers (beautiful hand) and in the lines of the palm discovered a sea voyage, a visitor, popularity and entertainment, malice she didn’t expect, and a triumph that was sure to come true.

Chapter 2
    T HE A MERICANS were last in line at the gate, because of their luggage, and as the line moved forward, he picked up a big suitcase in each hand and wondered which of the half-dozen women in black waiting outside the barrier would turn out to be Mme Viénot. And why was there no car?
    The station agent took their tickets gravely from between Harold’s teeth, and as he walked through the gate he saw that the street was empty. He went back for the dufflebag and another suitcase. When the luggage was all outside they stood and waited.
    The sign on the roof of the tiny two-room station said:
Brenodville-sur-Euphrone
. The station itself had as yet no doors, windows, or clock, and it smelled of damp plaster. The station platform was cluttered with bags of cement and piled yellow bricks. Facing the new station, on the other side of the tracks, was a wooden shelter with a bench and three travel posters: the Côte D’Azur (a sailboat) and Burgundy (a glass of red wine) and Auvergne (a rocky gorge). Back of the shelter a farmyard, with the upper story of the barn full of cordwood and the lower story stuffed with hay, served as a poster for Touraine.
    They waited for five minutes by his wrist watch, and then he went back inside and consulted the station agent, who said thatthe Château Beaumesnil was only two and a half kilometers outside the village and they could easily walk there. But not with the luggage, Harold pointed out. No, the station agent agreed, not with their luggage.
    There was no telephone in the station and so, leaving the dufflebag and the suitcases on the sidewalk where they could keep an eye on them, they walked across the cobblestone street to the café. He explained their situation to the four men sitting at a table on the café terrace, and learned that there was no telephone here either. One of the men called out to the proprietress, who appeared from within, and said that if Monsieur would walk in to the village, he would find several shops open, and from one of these he could telephone to the château.
    Standing on the sidewalk beside the luggage, Barbara followed Harold with her eyes until the street curved off to the left and he disappeared between two slate-roofed stone houses. He was gone for a long, long time. Just as she was beginning to wonder if she would ever see him again, she heard the rattle of an approaching