an unmarried woman
should be wandering alone amongst the by-ways of France?"

"I can see that you also have work to do."

Riviere looked towards her almost finished sketch of the Roman baths.
She removed it and passed him the rest of the book. He found the book
filled with curiously formal sketches and paintings of scenery--woodland
glades, open heaths, temples, arenas, and so on. These sketches caught
boldly at the high-lights of what they pictured, and ignored detail. The
colouring was also very noticeably simplified--"impressionistic" would
better express it.

"They look like stage scenes," he commented.

"They are. Sketches for stage scenes. I'm a scene painter. Just now I'm
gathering material for the staging of a Roman drama with a setting in
Roman Provence. Barreze is to produce it at the Odeon. It's my first big
chance."

Riviere pointed to one of her sketches. "Wasn't this worked into a scene
for 'Ames Nues,' at the Chatelet?"

"Quite right!"

"I remember being very much impressed by it at the time.... Yours must
be particularly interesting work?"

"The work one likes best is always peculiarly interesting. That's
happiness--to have the work one likes best."

Seeing that Riviere was genuinely interested, she began to dilate on her
work, explaining something of its technique, telling of its peculiar
difficulties. She showed him her sketches taken at Arles; mentioned
Orange, for its Roman arch and theatre, as a stopping-place on her
return journey to Paris. There was a glow in her voice that told clearly
of her absorption in her chosen work.

Riviere was enjoying the frank camaraderie of their conversation.
Suddenly the thought of the newspaper cutting came back to him sharply.
If Olive had inserted that advertisement, she must have some special
reason for it. Perhaps she wanted to communicate with him in reference
to the "death" of Matheson. Some hotel-keeper or railway-guard would no
doubt have seen the advertisement and answered it, letting her know of
Riviere's stay at Arles.

It would be prudent to write and allay suspicion. But he could not pen
the letter himself, because his handwriting would be recognized by
Olive.

Riviere solved the difficulty in his usual decisive fashion. "Miss
Verney," he said, "I wonder if you would do me a very big favour without
asking for my reasons in detail? It's a most unusual request I'm going
to make."

Elaine remembered her resolve to thaw this man of ice, a