A CANARY FOR ONE. It was very hot in the train and it was very hot in the lit salon3 compart­ment

It was very hot in the train and it was very hot in the lit salon³ compart­ment. There was no breeze came through¹¹ the open window. The American lady pulled the window-blind down and there was no more sea, even occa­sionally. On the other side there was glass, then the corridor, then an open indow, and outside the window were dusty trees and an oiled road and flat fields of grapes, with gray-stone hills behind them.

There was smoke from many tall chimneys — coming into Marseilles⁵ and the train slowed down and followed one track through many others into the station. The train stayed twenty-five minutes in the station at Marseilles and the American lady bought a copy of The Daily Mail⁶ and a half-bottle of Evian water⁷. She walked a little way along the station platform but she stayed near the steps of the car⁸ because at Cannes⁹ where it stopped for twelve minutes, the train had left with no signal of departure and she had gotten¹⁰ on only just in time. The American lady was a little deaf and she was afraid that perhaps signals of departure were given and that she did not hear them.

The train left the station in Marseilles and there was not only the switch­yards¹¹ and the factory smoke but, looking back, the town of Marseilles and the harbor with stone hills behind it and the last of the sun on the water. As it was getting dark the train passed a farmhouse burning in a field. Motor­cars were stopped along the road and bedding and things from inside the farmhouse were spread in the field. Many people were watching the house burn. After it was dark the train was in Avignon¹². People got on and off. At the news-stand Frenchmen, returning to Paris, bought that day's French papers. On the station platform were negro soldiers. They wore brown uni­forms and were tall and their faces shone, close under the electric light. Their faces were very black and they were too tall to stare¹³. The train left Avignon station with the negroes standing there. A short white sergeant was with them.

Inside the lit salon compartment the porter had pulled down the three beds from inside the wall and prepared them for sleeping. In the night the American lady lay without sleeping because the train was a rapide¹⁴ and went very fast and she was afraid of the speed in the night. The American lady's bed was the one next to the window. The canary from Palermo, a cloth spread over his cage, was out of the draft in the corridor that went into the compartment wash-room. There was a blue light outside the compartment, and all night the train went very fast and the American lady lay awake and waited for a wreck.

100 ^r