mind in it. This was a woman. Her age was perhaps
twenty-five, in her bearing was that subtle, scarcely definable,
sureness of self which marks off womanhood from girlhood. She climbed
from tier to tier of the amphitheatre with firm confident step; stood
gazing down on her dream pictures of the scene in the arena; moved on to
a fresh vantage-point. She wore a short tailored skirt which ignored the
ugly, skin-tight convention of the current fashion. Her cheeks were
fresh with a healthy English colour; her eyes were deep blue, toning
almost to violet; her hair was burnished chestnut under the soft felt
hat curled upwards in front; a faint odour of healthy womanhood formed
as it were an aura around her.

All this John Riviere had noticed subconsciously as she passed close by
him on the ledge where he sat, walking with her firm, confident step.
Though he noted it appreciatively, yet it disturbed him. He did not want
to notice any woman. He had big work to do, and on that he wanted to
concentrate all his faculties. He had had no thought of a woman in his
life when he broke the chains that shackled him to the Clifford Matheson
existence. He purposed to have no call of sex to divert him from the
realization of his big idea.

Presently she had climbed to the topmost ledge of the amphitheatre, and
stood out against the sky-line of the sunset-to-be, deep-chested,
straight, clean-limbed, a very perfect figure of a modern Diana.

It is a dangerous place on which to stand, that topmost ledge of the
amphitheatre, with no parapet and a sheer drop to the street below.
Almost against his will, Riviere mounted there.

But there was no occasion for his help, and they two stood there, some
yards apart, silent, watching the red ball of the sun sink down into the
limitless flats of the Camargue, and the grey mist rising from the
marshes to wrap its ghostly fingers round this city of the ghostly past.

Twice she looked towards him as though she must speak out the thoughts
conjured up by this splendid scene. It wanted only some tiny excuse of
convention to bridge over the silence between them, but Riviere on his
side would not seek it, and the woman hesitated to ask him to take up
the thread that lay waiting to his hand.

A cold wind sprang up, and she descended and made her way to her hotel
on the Place du Forum.

At dinner in the deserted dining-room of his hotel, Riviere found
himself seated at the next table to her. There are only t