f thing," I
ended lamely.

"Nonsense," she said briskly. She surveyed the Artist from mustache to
cane point and turned back to me. "You, at least," she declared, "are
American, but of the unpractical sort. And you are as unresourceful as
you are ungallant, Monsieur. How do I know? Well, you were
complaining about my monopolizing the dial. There is a map on the
tiles under your feet, and a compass dangles uselessly from your
watch-chain. I wonder, too, if you _are_ hyperopic. You know which is
the Carlton Hotel over there in Cannes. Tell me how many windows there
are across a floor."

The atmosphere was wonderfully clear, and the Carlton stood out
plainly. But I failed the test.

The girl laughed. I did not mind that. When the Artist started in, I
turned on him savagely.

"Well, you count the Carlton windows," I said.

"No specialist ever told me I was hyperopic," he came back.

I had to save the day by answering that I was glad to be myopic just
now. Who wanted to see Corsica any longer? The girl knew interesting
upper paths on the western side of the promontory. She had as much
time as we, or rather, I must say regretfully, she and the Artist had
more time than I. For eleven o'clock came quickly, and I hurried off
to fulfill my parental duty. The Artist told me afterwards that there
was a fine _cuisine_ at the Trayas restaurant.

I did think of my compass one day: for I had sore need of it. But, as
generally happens in such cases, I was not wearing it. Between Theoule
and La Napoule, the nearest town on the way to Cannes, a tempting
forest road leads back into the valley. A sign states that a curious
view of a mountain peak, named after Marcus Aurelius, could be had by
following the road for half a dozen kilometers. It was one of the
things tourists did when they were visiting the Corniche for a day.
Consequently, when one was staying on the Corniche, it was always an
excursion of the morrow. During the Artist's first week, we were
walking over to Mandelieu to take the tram to Cannes one morning, and
suddenly decided that the last thing in the world for sensible folks to
do was to go to Cannes on a day when the country was calling
insistently. We turned in at the sign. After we had seen the view, we
thought that it would be possible to take a short cut back to Theoule.
The wall of the valley that shut us off from the sea must certainly be
the big hill just behind the Villa Etoile. If,