t purple and red on the
mountain snow over there? It just gets the last sun, the very last."

"Yes," I answered, "but neither in a building or a villager of Cagnes.
There is a Parisienne--" And I told him about Mademoiselle Simone. He
was silent, and his fingers drummed upon the table, tipity-tap,
tipity-tap. "Show me your sketches," I asked.

"No," he said scathingly. "No! You are not interested in sketches. Nor
should I have been, had you been more generous. You had the luck in
Cagnes."

The prospect of a trout dinner at Villeneuve-Loubet took us rapidly down
the hill. We soon passed out of the fifteenth century into the
twentieth. Modern Cagnes, with its clang of tramway gong, toot of
locomotive whistle, honk-honk of motor horn, cafe terraces crowded with
Sunday afternooners, broad sidewalks and electric lights was another
world. But it was our world--and Mademoiselle Simone's. That is why
coming back into it from the hill of Cagnes was really like a cold
shower. For a sense of refreshment followed immediately the shock--and
stayed with us.

The hill of Cagnes we could rave about enthusiastically because we did
not have to go back there and live there. It will be "a precious
memory," as tourists say, precisely because it is a _memory_. The bird
in a cage is less of a prisoner than we city folk of the modern world.
For when you open the cage door, the bird will fly away and not come
back. We may fly away--but we do come back, and the sooner the better.
We love our prisons. We are happy (or think we are, which is the same
thing) in our chains. And in the brief time that we are a-wing, do we
really love unusual sights and novel things? In exploring, is not our
greatest joy and delight in finding something familiar, something we have
already known, something we are used to? An appreciative lover and
frequenter of grand opera once said to me, "'The Barber of Seville' is my
favorite, because I know I am going to have the treat of 'The Suwanee
River' or 'Annie Laurie' when I go to it." There is an honest
confession, such as we must all make if we are to do our souls good.

[Illustration: "The hill of Cagnes we could rave about."]

So you understand why there is so much of Mademoiselle Simone in my story
of Cagnes, and why the Artist had a grouch. His afternoon's work should
have pleased him, should have satisfied him. He would not have finished
it had he met Mademoiselle Simone. He knows more o