down the hill, in advance of the guide.
They had finished with him, too, and were already deep in a discussion
as to whether rum punch, or hot whisky-and-water with sugar and lemon
were better, for warding off a chill. I didn't see why I shouldn't
linger a little on the wide plateau, with the Dead City looming above me
like a skeleton seated on a ruined throne, and half southern France
spread out in a vast plain, a thousand feet below.

It was wonderful there, and strangely, almost terribly still. Once the
sea had washed the feet of the cliff, dim ages ago. Now my eyes had to
travel far to the Mediterranean, where Marseilles gloomed dark against
the burnished glimmer of the water. I could see the Etang de Berre, too,
and imagine I saw the Aurelian Way, and gloomy old Aigues-Mortes, which
we were to visit later. At lunch we had talked of a poem of Mistral's,
which a friend of Mr. Dane's had put into French--a poem all about a
legendary duel. And it was down there, in that far-stretching field,
that the duel was fought.

As I looked I realized that the clouds boiling up from some vast
cauldron behind the world were choking the horizon with their purple
folds. They were beautiful as the banners of a royal army advancing over
the horizon, but--they would hide the sun as he went down to bathe in
the sea. He was embroidering their edges with gold now. I was seeing the
best at this moment. If I started to go back, I should have time to
pause here and there, gazing at things the Turnours had hurried past.

I went down slowly, reluctantly, the melancholy charm of the place
catching at my dress as I walked, like the supplicating fingers of a
ghost condemned to dumbness. There was one rock-hewn house I had wanted
to see, coming up, which Lady Turnour had scorned, saying "when you've
been in one, you've been in all." And she had not understood the guide's
story of a legend that was attached to this particular house. Perhaps if
she had she would not have cared; but now I was free I couldn't resist
the temptation of going in, to poke about a little. You could go several
floors down, the guide had said; that was certain, but the tale was,
that a secret way led down from the lowest cellar of this cave house,
continuing--if one could only find it--to the enchanted cavern far
below, where Taven, the witch, kept and cured of illness the girl loved
by Mireio.

I didn't know who Mireio was, except that he lived in songs and legends
of O