My friends wished me to go to the south, for I have always loved the sunshine, and there my little daughter died, and perhaps death will there come to me in gentler shape.

But on my way, I wished to say good-bye to you, dear friends of long ago, whom I have always loved, though we have been so little together.' "And then they took each other's hands, gently and quietly, the three old ladies, and softly kissed each other's withered cheeks, down which a few tears made their way; the time was past for them for anything but gentle and chastened feelings.

And whispering to their old friend not good-bye, but 'Au revoir, au revoir in a better country,' my ladies parted once more with their childish friend.
"She died a few months later; news of her death was sent them.

_They_ lived to be old--past eighty both of them, when they died within a few days of each other.

But I never hobble up and down the terrace walk without thinking of them," added Dudu, "and on the whole, my dears, even if I had my choice, I don't think I should care to live another two or three hundred years in a world where changes come so quickly." Hugh and Jeanne were silent for a moment.