o more personal
matters. Elaine, keeping to her resolve of the morning, led it in that
direction. He learnt that she was an orphan; that her nearest relatives
were entirely out of sympathy with her ideas and aspirations, and
profoundly distasteful to her; that she took full pride in her
independence and the position she was carving out for herself in the
world of theatrical art.

"To be free; to be independent; to live your own life; to know that you
buy your bread and bed with the money you've earned yourself--it's fine,
it's splendid!" said Elaine, with flushed cheek. "I wonder if men ever
have that feeling as strongly as we women do?"

"'To be free, sire, is only to change one's master,'" quoted Riviere.

"'Master' is a word I should rule out of the dictionary," she replied.

"And if ever your present freedom were suddenly denied to you by Fate?"

She shivered, and moved a little into the full blaze of the sunshine.

* * * * *

In the afternoon Riviere took train to Arles. The way lies by vineyards
and olive orchards alternating with open, wind-swept heathland. The
stunted olive trees, twisted and gnarled, pictured themselves to him as
little old men worn and weary with their fight against the winds. Here
the _mistral_ was master and the olive trees his slaves.

At Arles Riviere posted his letter in a box on the platform of the
station, and asked of a porter when the next train would take him back
to Nimes. Standing close by as he asked this question was a lean, wiry,
crafty-looking peasant of the Camargue--a hard-bit youth toughened by
his work on the soil. The most prominent feature of the face was the
nose smashed out of shape. Riviere did not know that it was he himself
who had left that life-mark on the young man only a few days before--he
had almost forgotten the incident--but the latter recognized Riviere at
once and went white with anger under the tanned skin.

Whilst he would have taken a blow from the knife as "all in the game," a
smash from a bare fist that made a permanent disfigurement was
completely outside his code of sportsmanship. He resented it with the
white-hot passion of the Midi.

The meeting was pure chance. Crau, the young Provencal, was on the
station to take train back to his home village in the marshes. Now he
made a sudden resolution, and going to the booking-office, asked for a
ticket for Nimes. He had relations in that town--small tradespeople--an