sula's-of-the-Lake. This building, it seemed
to her, was of no recognized type of architecture. It was neither
classic nor Gothic: not Renaissance, Egyptian, nor Moorish. It gave the
impression of being a mere fantastic creation of a gay and irresponsible
brain. If a confectioner accustomed to work in coloured sugars were to
dream of a superlative masterpiece, his exalted fancy might take some
such shape as this.

The irregular, cream-coloured facade was broken up into many separate
parts by pillars and frenzied ornaments of plaster, and there had been
addition after addition, stretching away long and low to the left. A row
of large windows, discreetly veiled so that no shadows could be cast
from within, glowed with warm yellow light. Their refusal to betray any
hint of what passed on the other side suggested a hidden crowd busy
with some exciting, secret pleasure. Along the cornice of the newer
portions at the left of the original Casino were perched bronze youths
with golden wings, their hands holding aloft bunches of golden flowers.
Two towers meretriciously mosaiced with coloured tiles balanced the
centre of the higher and middle building, and a portico of iron and
glass, ornate yet banal as the architecture of a railway station,
protected the carpeted steps and the three large doors which were
grouped closely together, doors through which people constantly passed
in and out like bees at the entrance to a hive. In the pensive sweetness
of the semi-tropical night, this fantastic erection in plaster and
gilding and coloured ornaments seemed an outrage, a taunt, a purposeful
affront; and yet--the very violence of the contrast, its outrageousness,
gave it a kind of obsessing charm.

Unseen from where Mary sat, the Mediterranean sighed upon its ancient
rocks. A faint breath of the mysteriously perfumed air stirred the
exotic palms over her head and made their fronds rub against each other
gratingly, as if some secret signal were being carried on from one to
another. Turning to right, to left, or to look behind her, dimly seen
mountains soared toward a sky that deepened from asphodel to the dark
indigo of a star-powdered zenith. Eastward in the distance ran a linked
chain of lights along the high road that led to Italy; and a bright
cluster like a knot of fireflies, pulsing on the breast of a mountain,
marked the old hill-village of Roquebrune. Kindly enveloping nature was
so sane and wholesome in her vast wisdom and sti