oncealment, and a sunshade could be seen for miles.
Maurice had a tiresome feeling that she was lying out somewhere with
that horrible sunshade over her head and a novel by Gyp on her lap. Had
she, he wondered, ever read any of his books? Perhaps when she found out
his name she would come up to him and say: "Are you _the_ Mr. Maurice
Van Trean?" And when he had bowed in the affirmative, she would add that
she liked "Sur les Rives" best of his books--"she had read them all many
times--and especially that marvellous description of Camille's return to
her husband."

Maurice walked for miles down the hard glaring white road. It was the
most uncomfortable thing he could think of doing, and when you are
determined to enjoy nothing there is a certain voluptuous satisfaction
in a maximum of unpleasantness. The air was burning and solid. An
occasional convolvulus drowned in dust straggled in weary clinging grace
by the roadside--a pathetic symbol, he reflected, of the pale refined
irrelevant women who fade ineffectually beside the highways of life. He
thought of Marthe with her urgent pulsating rhythm, the rhythm he
remembered bitterly, that had brought him here. He wished vindictively
that she were beside him, the hard burning surface of the road biting
through the soles of her shoes. He would walk on and on till there were
blisters on her feet and her steps were lagging. His teeth were set in
the grim satisfaction of revenge.

"This is the country," he would say. "Do you feel the health-giving sea
breeze you told me about?"

He stopped suddenly. Walking towards him was the lady. The offensive
sunshade was over her head, but her veil was up. She was, he supposed,
forty-six--no, forty-four. Her eyes were wide apart, dark and indolent
and long--brown or blue they might have been. Her face was wide and so
was her mouth with lips like curtains drawn across the teeth. Her
cheek-bones were high and her skin, like marshmallow, was marbled with
the bright yellow lights and bright blue shadows of early afternoon.
There was a curious grace about her broad solid figure, an unhurried
indifferent grace, as if she said to herself, "I shall please at my own
time." She was not pretty. Her clothes belonged to her as essentially as
her limbs.

Maurice took off his hat.

"Forgive me, Madame, but I think that we are both living at the Hotel
Bungalow."

"I think so, too," she said drily.

He thought that she thought that he was taking a li