, and Mary
became conscious of an invisible tide of burning life all around her
which caught her in its rushing flood. She was impelled to float on a
swift and shining stream which she knew was carrying many others besides
herself in the same direction toward an unseen but definite end. She was
like a leaf snatched from a quiet corner by the wind and forced to join
the whirl of its fellow-dancers. It was a feeling that warmed her veins
with excitement, and made her reckless.

The omnibus passed the Casino, and a little farther on stopped in front
of the Hotel de Paris. It too was fantastically ornate, surely the most
extraordinary hotel on earth, with a high roof of a gray severity which
ironically frowned down upon gilded balconies and nude plaster women who
supported them, robustly voluptuous creatures who faded into foliage
below the waist, like plump nymphs escaping the rude pursuit of gods.
Their bareness and boldness startled the convent-bred girl, even
horrified her. She was the last to leave the omnibus, and then, instead
of pushing in with her fellow-passengers to secure a room before others
could snap up everything, she lingered a moment on the steps.

Still that magical light illumined the _Place_, under the sky's rosy
fire. The long glass facade of the restaurant sent out diamond flashes.
The pigeons strutting in the open space in front of the Casino were
jewels moving on sticks of coral. As they walked, tiny purple shadows
followed them, as if their little red legs were tangled in pansies.
Across the _Place_, on the other side of the garden and opposite the
hotel, was an absurd yet gay collection of bubbly Moorish domes, and
open or glassed-in galleries, evidently a cafe. Music was playing there,
and in front of the balconies were many chairs and little tables where
people drank tea and fed the strutting pigeons. Beyond the bubbly domes
shimmered a panorama of beauty which by force of its magnificence
redeemed the frivolous fairyland from vulgarity, rather than rebuked it.
Under the rain of rose and gold, as if seen through opaline gauze, shone
sea and hills and distant mountains. On a green height a ruined castle
and its vassal rock-village seemed to have fallen from the top and been
arrested by some miracle halfway down. Beneath, a peninsula of pines
silvered with olives floated on a sea of burnished gold; and above
soared mountains that went billowing away to the east and to Italy, deep
purple-red in th